REVIEW - NON-STOP

For all that so much great film is often praised for its realism, this very medium is, by nature, most unrealistic. There's nothing realistic about pretending to be a fictional character with a film camera and boom mic hovering around you, and there's nothing realistic about sitting in a dark room watching people do that on a giant screen. Before long, storywriters caught on to the fact that audiences crave that fantasy which they cannot achieve in their own realistic lives, and it is out of this that stories like this were not only established but were proliferated. We think of the whodunit as a staple of the cinematic repertoire, and thus it feels safe and basic, when it is perhaps anything but. One way or another, it also feels like a lot of fun. Non-Stop is less a whodunit than a whomightdoitandwhywouldtheydoit, which is just as good, especially when that other staple of the innocent-man-wrongly-accused is added. There's nothing like a bit of outraged desperation in our protagonist to help get our blood flowing faster. That frantic frustration drives Non-Stop, which is essential since it takes place almost wholly within a confined space, where the dramatic possibilities are perhaps limited (though certainly exhausted) - another detail storywriters are savvy to, and which they exploit to maximum potential. Beyond the death threats and bomb scares and requisite bust-ups, this is a film about people who know better trying to get people who think they know better to stfu and calm down, and who can't relate to that? That's the realism, albeit warped past recognition, that audiences don't realise they respond to, while craving that fantasy, which is possibly most evident in the cast's colourful accents. Corny action thrillers like this thrive off of their eccentricities, and could all do with such unintentional comedic flair.