Neeson's flight into danger fails to take off as a thriller

With: Liam Neeson, Julianne Moore, Michelle Dockery

Runtime: 106 minutes

USE any economic indicator you like to illustrate the nature of Britain's decline, but perhaps nothing quite sums up how far this sceptred isle, this earth of majesty, has slipped than the sight of Lady Mary from Downton Abbey working as a trolley dolly. Hold on to that notion, disturbing as it may be, because it is one of the few ideas in Jaume Collet-Serra's hijack thriller that is not as barking as Crufts.

When it comes to silliness at 36,000 feet, it might have been thought that nothing could beat Snakes On A Plane. Ladies and gentlemen, meet Liam Neeson On A Plane. Neeson's air marshal Everyman is about to have a very bad day at the office so that audiences can have a thought-free Saturday night at the movies. Nothing wrong with that, but the ageing action man formula, deployed previously by the director and Neeson in Unknown and set to be repeated in Run All Night next year, is starting to look in need of a nice lie-down.

Neeson plays Bill Marks, a man who is not looking forward to his flight from New York to London. That might have something to do with the fact he is flying Aquatlantic airways, a firm that breaks all sensible laws of transatlantic airline naming by referring to water in its title.

As he makes his way through security and on to the plane, Bill checks out his fellow passengers. At this point, some readers might fancy they have landed back in the 1970s, the era of the Airport movies. If that was so, the flight would be chock-full of well-kent faces. Here, the budget stretches to Neeson and Julianne Moore. The principle is the same, though: the audience is invited to look around and sniff out potential troublemakers. Is that mild-mannered business type really so equable? Are those honeymooners genuinely sweetness and light? This is the fun part of the exercise, and Collet-Serra makes the most of it.

Someone is threatening the safety of the plane and it is Bill's job to find out who it is and stop them. As luck would have it, he is flying on exactly the right aircraft to perform this task. Though it is small (just 150 passengers) it is Tardis-like inside. Not only does it have the roomiest toilets ever - enough room to swing a cat, and several suspects - but the crew includes Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery). The look that turned a thousand uppity footmen to stone is unleashed here to tell passengers to return to their seats and fasten their seatbelts.

Bill also has the services of fellow passenger Jen Summers (Moore) to call on. She is only too happy to be deputised by the marshal. Presumably she had seen the in-flight movie before and was looking for a way to pass the time. Nor is she the only passenger to get a look in. Air marshal Bill turns out to be the sharing kind, at one point giving a lengthy account of both his life and what is going on aboard the plane. The passengers look on in horror. One can only guess whether this is due to the alarming nature of the information, or the shockingly obvious way the director has chosen to explain the increasingly bizarre events.

Either way, we plough on. Collet-Serra, who made his name with the wonderfully creepy Orphan before moving on to the stolen identity thriller Unknown, attempts to keep the audience guessing with twist after turn, each one more handbrake than the last.

When not throwing bum steers, he tries for humour, sometimes raising a smile but mostly failing. Though on firmer ground on the action front, neither the budget nor the story allow for enough of this to drive the picture on and make it live up to its title.

It is one of the trickier set-ups for a film - put a range of characters in a confined space, supply a mystery, and keep the audience guessing for as long as you can. An heir to Hitchcock could have had a riot with this; after a promising start Collet-Serra makes a hash of it, relying on Neeson to save the day.

What a strange career progression Neeson has enjoyed. He has gone from Serious Actor to Aslan The Lion to Action Man. He is not half bad at the latter, either. There are not many actors whose range stretches from finding the stray teddy bears of frightened children to frisking suspects all in the space of one film, but Neeson is one of them. Even the mighty Neeson, however, struggles to keep this boat afloat. Part thriller, part tongue in cheek (got to have those nods to Airplane), Non-Stop is a movie that is in every sense up in the air.

Should Collet-Serra and Neeson want to travel the transport thriller way again they are going to need a fresh setting, a fitting place for the deployment of their talents. How about the night bus from Glasgow to London? Now that I would pay to see.