Everyone who sees the trailers and TV-spots for
Non-Stop,
the ones where Liam Neeson beats people up on an airplane while racing against time to stop a hijacking, quickly labels the film “
Taken
on an airplane”. If only it was.
Taken
transformed the dramatically gifted Neeson into a rare breed of authentic, old-age action hero, and the key to what makes that film such a great time is how willing it is to bypass a sensible plot in favor of one bonkers smack-down after another.
Taken
is infectiously ballistic, and you can tell from its trailers that
Non-Stop
wants to be the same. And though Neeson’s beat-downs and shouting threats still hit with brute force, screenwriters John W. Richardson, Chris Roach, and Ryan Engle pack so many unneeded, eye-rolling clichés into the story that
Non-Stop
is neither as emotional as it wants to be nor as ludicrously fun as…
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There’s a moment in
RoboCop
when the eponymous law enforcer races through downtown Detroit on his sleek, black motorcycle and the camera follows him from behind at full speed, weaving through moving cars just as he does. Suddenly, horns take over the score, and I’ll be damned if many viewers don’t immediately think of the exact same shot from
The Dark Knight
(it doesn’t help that RoboCop and Batman have similar black suits either). And this isn’t the only time Jose Padilha’s reboot of the 1987 science fiction classic by Paul Verhoeven calls to mind Christopher Nolan’s game-changer. Look, it’s been six years since
Knight
redefined the standards of the genre picture, and, believe me, I too get annoyed with having to go back and compare current movies to that milestone, but it’s almost impossible not to do so when genre picture after genre picture, from Superhero films like
Man…
When I heard the news Sunday that Philip Seymour Hoffman, 46, was found dead in his New York City apartment, I was stunned speechless at first. Then I felt absolutely gutted. It was only a week ago I was watching Punch Drunk Love and witnessing a classic Hoffman freak-out (see Charlie Wilson’s War too), the type where heerupts into a hilarious cursing fit and his arms gesture with tyrannical authority, his face turns bright red, and his voice swells as if he’s giving a mad sermon. He turns a simple “No, fuck you!” to Adam Sandler’s socially inept Barry Egan into a powerhouse punch of moral degradation. And that was Hoffman’s incredible gift, he took the simplest of lines and the most troubled of characters – be it a music critic, a priest, a cult leader, a novelist, a CIA operative, etc. – and made them matter in the…
SHARF @ THE MOVIES 