Metacritic reviews

Non-Stop isn't exactly a smooth ride, but as far it being the big screen equivalent of an airplane novel, one that you read on the flight and throw away when you get to your destination, it is wildly successful. Just don't think too hard about it.

A relatively high-flying adventure, injecting the always-entertaining airplane-set thriller with some fresh thrills and a cadre of characters worth getting invested in.

The latest collaboration between director Jaume Collet-Serra and star Liam Neeson is made with far more care and visual detail than you might expect.

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.

Would that the climax lived up to the tension-filled first two thirds. Let’s just say that Non-Stop reaches for some pointed post-9/11 political commentary that almost entirely exceeds its grasp. Total brainlessness, in this case, would have been a virtue.

Non-Stop is a solid, workmanlike action picture that builds slowly, bends over backwards to over-explain itself and its villain, and delivers a lulu of an ending.

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.

In the end, Non-Stop is a waste of a perfectly good Neeson, and of our time and goodwill. Please make it stop.

A nifty lift-off and a tense first hour lead us, disappointingly, to a very bumpy landing. While Neeson and co. do their best, the script just doesn’t deliver where it really matters.

Non-Stop is weak sauce, a cheapie snoozer that not even heavyweights like Neeson and Moore can save.