Non-Stop

For about seventy-five minutes, Non-Stop is a tense, pleasing thriller about an alcoholic, clearly unstable U.S. air marshal (Liam Neeson) who's being taunted via cell phone by an unknown passenger aboard a plane bound for London. The creeping texter claims that every twenty minutes someone aboard the plane is going to die until 150 million big ones are wired to some mysterious bank account with lots of numbers.

As the put-upon hero whom almost nobody on the plane trusts, Neeson is powerfully grim yet heartfelt. He has qualities reminiscent of George C. Scott: the same kind of subtle command tinged with pathos is present in Neeson's facial expressions, particularly in his eyes. In the movie, he's unable to get over a personal tragedy. (Always the impetus for this kind of character's motivation. Cue eye roll.) And of course this predictably becomes a way for the villain to goad him and a way for him to find what Hollywood thinks of as redemption. (I'll give you a hint: he feels guilty about being an uninvolved dad and there's an innocent little girl aboard the plane who reminds him of his daughter.)

But after operating like an exciting modern-day Agatha Christie movie--Murder on the Transatlantic Airways--that left me quite giddy with happiness, Non-Stop veers into the nether-regions of a truly craptacular plot twist from which it never rebounds fully. Yes, I was happy with the movie overall, but the twist is so lame that it's a huge let-down, because the movie has shown us such a good time until then. It feels like lazy writing on the part of the three people who hashed out this sky-thriller. And maybe it was the best they could do--I promise not to reveal any big spoilers--with a premise like this. But if Agatha Christie could churn out like 90 of these thriller type novels, couldn't they get one script right all the way? (Granted, hers weren't all great either, but she nailed enough of them in the right places.)

But I cherished those seventy-five solid minutes. And I still think if you go out and see Non-Stop (which, given what else is available this weekend, is not a bad choice), you'll agree that the movie delivers a lot of fun suspense, even after the big dumb reveal. One more quibble: the passengers begin communicating with loved ones with their phones, which causes the story to leak, and soon they're watching live news coverage of their own hijacking (some kind of weird thrill) on the screens in front of them. This is supposed to be a jab at the bad reporting that can come of a 24-hour-news cycle, but Non-Stop is such a conventional thriller (in many ways, and despite being likable) that such commentary hardly registers.

As always, it's really great to see the lovely Julianne Moore, even if she's relegated to playing the den mother, standing by Neeson's character and helping out in his feeble investigation of the suspicious and understandably rattled fellow passengers. She does get some good moments though, and the chemistry between the two of them is nice and easy. I wish there had been more.

The supporting cast, which does a fine job, includes Michelle Dockery, Scoot McNairy, and Nate Parker. Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra.

Arbitrage

More terrifying than King Kong, Jaws, or the apocalypse, the Corporation has become the cinema villain/monster par excellence. This is apropos in our current age of corporate executives turning money into more money in mere seconds, and wiping out the life savings of entire companies with fraudulent business practices. Arbitrage, like last year's superior Margin Call, examines a billionaire (Richard Gere) whose irresponsible, arrogant, greedy behavior threatens his company and all who work for it. But he's nothing if not a sly businessman, so when his hedge fund is threatened with exposure, he decides to sell his massive company in time to avoid public embarrassment or any financial ruin. Gere is perfectly suited to this role: he's got the look of a wearied executive down, spinning all kinds of falsities about working for his family, when it's really his own success, the addiction he has to making more money, that drives him.

When his hush-hush lover, a failed French artist, dies in a car accident in the middle of the night because Gere fell asleep at the wheel, he's finally faced with a genuinely sticky situation, and Arbitrage is about how he tires to get himself out from under it. It's not a brilliant movie, but there's something brilliantly corrupt that it shows us about human beings, about American culture, about our entire value system.

What's so refreshing about Arbitrage is that it doesn't go for the obvious, but the inevitable. The people in this world are the recipients of a moral decay that's far more glamorous than the things we see on the news--the horrific shootings and the drug trafficking and the human trafficking, that we all deplore with such moral certitude. The moral decay of Arbitrage is one where negotiations extend beyond the conference room and into the bedroom, where money drives every motivation, and even marriage runs on the concept of mutual interests. There's a decidedly Victorian sense of patriarchal faux-benevolence that keeps all the players in place. The finale is so wonderfully fitting that it makes up for the fact that at times Arbitrage feels like an episode of Law and Order mixed with Wall Street. It's not a great movie, but a pretty good one, and a frighteningly apt comment on human character.

The supporting cast includes Susan Sarandon (who doesn't get to shine the way I wanted her to, until near the end) as Gere's wife, Tim Roth as a detective, Brit Marling as Gere's daughter, an executive herself who still sees the business world as a place inhabited by honest people with clean motives, Nate Parker (who delivers the film's most sympathetic performance) as a down-on-his-luck kid (whose father once worked for Gere) who comes to Gere's rescue, Laetitia Casta as Gere's girl-on-the-side, Stuart Margolin, Chris Eigeman, Graydon Carter, and Bruce Altman. Written and directed by Nicholas Jarecki. 105 min. ★★★