Neeson plays Bill Marks, an air marshal who is nursing his perpetual brooding sadness with a steady diet of hard liquor and self-imposed alienation. While on assignment on a flight from London to New York, he begins receiving a series of text messages demanding $150 million or someone on the plane will be killed within 20 minutes. The person sending the texts not only knows who Marks is and his personal background, but also appears to be on the plane, since he or she references things Marks is doing. Given that the plane, despite being a massive jumbo jet, has limited space from which no one can escape and offers few spaces that are completely out of sight, it would seem a near impossibility to murder someone without others noticing. Yet, the mastermind of the airborne scenario manages to do just that—multiple times, in fact. With each death, Marks becomes more desperate, and his desperation leads to actions that start to make him look unhinged and, even worse, like the person hijacking the plane rather than its potential savior. Pretty soon, both the aviation officials on the ground and the passengers on the plane think that he is the one taking over, making his would-be heroic endeavors all the more difficult.

Like Agatha Christie’s iconic mystery And Then There Were None (also known as Ten Little Indians), there are only so many potential suspects in a confined space, and the numbers dwindle with each death. Marks has a wide array of characters to deal with, some of whom are helpful, some of whom are impediments, and all of whom might be behind the murders. There’s Jen Summers (Julianne Moore), the chatty woman who sits next to him after making a commotion about getting a window seat. There’s the New York City police detective (Corey Stoll) who is clearly uncomfortable with being told what to do by someone else in charge, and Nate Parker (Zack White), a businessman with whom Marks has a conflict in the airport before boarding. A Middle Eastern doctor (Omar Metwally) draws attention simply because of his ethnicity, and it’s hard to discount the possibility that the pilots might somehow be in on it. In other words, anyone and everyone could be involved, and the overwhelming time-sensitive task of figuring out who’s sending the texts before another body drops takes Marks, who is already stressed, to the tipping point.

Director Jaume Collet-Serra, who got his start helming stylish horror films like Orphan (2008) and previously directed Neeson in Unknown, keeps the film chugging along, hoping we don’t ask too many logistical questions about the plot. He uses a few stylistic flourishes here and there, including floating text bubbles on the screen to convey the electronic conversation Marks is having with the hijacker(s) and to avoid monotonously cutting back and forth to close-ups of his cell phone. Most importantly, Collet-Serra recognizes that Neeson is his greatest asset, and he keeps us focused on his character’s increasingly anxious need to save everyone on the plane.

This gives the film one of its more interesting dimensions, as it tinges Marks’s heroism with a sense of genuine desperation that increases with the body count. As an alcoholic with a tragic past, Marks is a conventionally redeemable protagonist, one who we recognizes as a fundamentally good man dragged down by life’s unfortunate circumstances, and in this regard Neeson’s dramatic prowess aids him as much as his physicality. Marks’s past is gradually revealed as the plot unfolds, but all we really need to know is that he has felt the acute pain of loss and that saving the people on the plane offers him an opportunity to salvage his dwindling humanity. It’s standard fare, familiar stuff, but Neeson elevates it, as he will undoubtedly do again in a similar kind of film at the beginning of next year.

Copyright ©2014 James Kendrick

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