Everyone's favorite 61-year-old action star returned to theaters Friday in "Non-Stop."
Liam Neeson teams up with "Unknown" director Jaume Collet-Serra for another action thriller where he uses his "particular set of skills."
This time around, Neeson stars as air marshall Bill Marks who is trying to stop a killer aboard a plane from offing a passenger every 20 minutes.
Reviews for the film are pretty mixed, but that doesn't matter.
Fans love Neeson, who has become a popular action star since his role in 2008's "Taken." The film is expected to top the box office this weekend with $28.5 million.
Most critics are using two words to describe the movie: ludicrous and ridiculous.
"A constant low boil of ridiculousness both mocks and sustains Non-Stop, a jerry-rigged terror-on-a-plane thriller with a premise so far-fetched as to create a degree of suspense over how the writers will wriggle out of the knot of their own making."
“Ludicrously entertaining. Wait, no, ludicrous and entertaining; a slice of sublime nonsense.”
NPR:
"But if it works, it's because Neeson and Collet-Serra, as well as Julianne Moore as Neeson's business-class seatmate Jen, are all fully aware of how ludicrous this exercise is. Witness the wry joke Collet-Serra uses to obscure onscreen expletives in text messages that would have otherwise given the film an R-rating, or the way Moore's breezy nonchalance provides a counterbalance to Neeson's studied intensity."
"The problem is that Non-Stop tries to be something it’s not. It has one too many scenes that border on ludicrous, and the big reveal barely makes sense."
"... its twist-a-minute script is patently ridiculous and its appeals to our post-9/11 anxieties are as subtle as a jackhammer."
"The general rule seems to be that the amount of threat summoned in the first half of the movie is exactly equal to the ludicrousness of the explanation tying everything together in the second. "
How ridiculous is it, Grantland?
"The level of ridiculousness is equal to the care put into making the ridiculousness possible. It isn’t just the plotting (although the plot goes happily nuts). It’s the sense that a director actually directed, writers actually wrote, and a producer kept the movie together."
Variety uses both.
"By its very design an exercise in claustrophobia, “Non-Stop” eventually runs out of places to go, and builds to a big third-act reveal that’s at once so ludicrous and heavy-handed that it sucks all the thrust out of the movie’s jet engines."
"But even in the movie’s most ridiculous moments, Collet-Serra keeps the pacing brisk and knows how to divert our attention with a well-timed bit of comic relief."
But is it any good?
Sure, as long as you don't take it seriously.
"This tense, terrific thriller starring Liam Neeson as Bill Marks, a boozy U.S. air marshal coping with a terrorist on a transatlantic flight from New York to London, isn't new. It's "Taken" on a Plane. Accept that and you'll have a high old time."
IGN:
"Non-Stop is what might happen if Agatha Christie was forced to pen her own version of Taken (which, in itself, would be a fun movie)."
We marked this down as our must-see guilty pleasure of the year. Throw logic out the window and just enjoy this one if you're a fan of Neeson.
Check out a trailer for the film:
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