What could have been a fun throwback to disaster movies from the 1970s, about a bomb on a plane and a terrorist threat, is over complicated with its political subtexts and wholly unbelievable contrivances.
Liam Neeson is good, as usual, as an Air Marshall who begins receiving text messages threatening to kill a passenger on board his midair flight (from NY to London) every 20 minutes, unless a huge ransom is paid to a bank account in Neeson's own character's name. The first death, at the hands of Neeson's character himself, was clever and well done, I thought. But the explanation later given for that death was ridiculous, and that's it for originality here, unless you call absurdly drilling a hole from the toilet to the cockpit originality.
One ludicrous twist after another follows, as nearly every stereotypical character in arm's length is turned into a red herring at some point. Julianne Moore is mostly there just to act suspiciously, and babble about her surgery, which is completely irrelevant to the plot.
The conclusion takes itself FAR too seriously, going from what should have been a fun action thriller off into a political message movie, by claiming the two men responsible for these actions were motivated by 9/11. But then the screenplay reverts to its illogical ways, as the two men responsible for this are going to ... wait for it, wait for it, parachute from the plane flying over the Atlantic Ocean. Then what? Will they swim to the UK?
Film tries to work as a mystery, but with so very many red herrings, startling coincidences, and plot holes, it falls flat.
Liam Neeson is good, as usual, as an Air Marshall who begins receiving text messages threatening to kill a passenger on board his midair flight (from NY to London) every 20 minutes, unless a huge ransom is paid to a bank account in Neeson's own character's name. The first death, at the hands of Neeson's character himself, was clever and well done, I thought. But the explanation later given for that death was ridiculous, and that's it for originality here, unless you call absurdly drilling a hole from the toilet to the cockpit originality.
One ludicrous twist after another follows, as nearly every stereotypical character in arm's length is turned into a red herring at some point. Julianne Moore is mostly there just to act suspiciously, and babble about her surgery, which is completely irrelevant to the plot.
The conclusion takes itself FAR too seriously, going from what should have been a fun action thriller off into a political message movie, by claiming the two men responsible for these actions were motivated by 9/11. But then the screenplay reverts to its illogical ways, as the two men responsible for this are going to ... wait for it, wait for it, parachute from the plane flying over the Atlantic Ocean. Then what? Will they swim to the UK?
Film tries to work as a mystery, but with so very many red herrings, startling coincidences, and plot holes, it falls flat.