'Non-Stop'

As shown in the February 12, 2014 edition of the 'Monroe County Reporter':

Alcohol.  A teddy bear.  A "magic" ribbon.  A window seat.  Free Wi-Fi.  Business-Class.  TSA.  A gun.  A cup-holder.  A co-pilot.  A lawyer.  An air marshal.  All of these, including more, are symbols of security in the movie "Non-Stop" for the passengers on board the plane. 

For the millions of dollars the movie made over the weekend, Liam Neeson ("Taken", "The Unkown") is becoming our sense of security for perpetual casting in a movie thriller.  We cannot get enough of the presence he brings to the screen as a man we hope to never meet in a fight.

As the movie unravels so does its characters' sense of control.  Bill Marks (Liam Neeson) is a U.S. federal air marshal whose reputation as an alcoholic precedes him.  When the plane he boards on duty is midway over the Atlantic Ocean, he begins to receive text messages on his secure phone from an anonymous person on the plane that one passenger will be killed every twenty minutes unless 150 million dollars is transferred into a specified bank account.  How he tries to take control of the situation quickly turns into havoc as he becomes branded as the terrorist.

This movie is a great movie to watch only if we give up our own sense of control in thinking this movie is anything more than a movie thriller.  There is potential for this film to be more than just a mere thriller, but it would have met its audience like extended periods of turbulence; it would have been an unpleasant interruption.   One of the passengers in the film declares that feelings of control are an illusion.  It is this feeling of disillusionment which makes this movie suspenseful.  The enemy is somewhere on the plane and we do not know for sure who it is.  Is it any wonder then why we like movies like this?  Movies like this remove us from our world of fear and take us to a world where we know the enemy will eventually be exposed.

All of this is to say "Non-Stop" is a round-trip flight back to our world where we are faced with the terror of our own insecurities.