FILM REVIEW OF ''SURVIVOR" (2014)

"Ninja Assassin" director James McTeigue's "Survivor" (***1/2 OUT OF ****) qualifies as a tense, London-based, international-terrorist thriller about a wrongly accused American Foreign Service Officer sought for murdering a colleague, while a lethal assassin pursues her to finish his execution.  Milla Jovovich plays the heroine, but she isn't in full kick butt "Resident Evil" mode, wielding weapons and mixed martial arts. Instead, she is simply exemplary at her job, rides a motorcycle with style, speaks several languages, and knows how to stay one step ahead of her fleet-footed adversaries.  Nevertheless, while this makes her an efficient, no-nonsense protagonist, nothing about her character is terribly interesting. In a splendid example of casting against the grain, former 007 star Pierce Brosnan exudes menace as an evil assassin who refuses to quit. Brosnan's hit-man is nicknamed 'the Watchmaker,' and he is both smart and resourceful.  One of 'the Watchmaker's smartest efforts occurs when he takes a short-cut to catch up with our heroine as she scrambles down a staircase.  The Watchmaker spots a series of lights attached by a cable dangling in the stairway well.  Improbably, he leaps onto it and shoots out the lights as he slides down the cable.  Of course, he doesn't get her, but it is a really cool move of his part. This scene is reminiscent of Matt Damon in "The Bourne Identity" when he used a man's body to drop from several floors in a stairway well to reach the bottom.  A solid supporting cast, with James D'Arcy and Angela Bassett in minor roles, backs up Jovovich and Brosnan.  At the core of this outlandish but briskly-paced thriller is a terrorist's ambitious plan to use the New Year's Eve ceremonies in Times Square as the setting to detonate a bomb.  McTeigue maintains palatable tension throughout this above-average nail-biter despite a minor lapse in credibility that occurs about three-fourths of the way through his 96-minute, PG-13 melodrama.

Passport visa clearance is a hot issue at the American Embassy in London where Kate works, and she has the final say on who gets a passport.  Nonetheless, a fellow Embassy employee, Bill Talbot (Robert Forster of "Jackie Brown"), wants her to lighten up with regard to a physician, Emile Balan (Roger Rees of "The Prestige"), who wants to attend a conference in the U.S.  Warning signs come up that alert Kate Abbott (Milla Jovovich of "The Fifth Element") and she has second thoughts.  During the prologue, two American helicopter pilots are shot down over Kandahar Province, Afghanistan, and the villainous natives let one of the pilots live while they doused the other with gasoline and immolate him. Now, Bill Talbot is struggling to get Kate out of the picture, but the villains have his son, believed dead, in custody and are blackmailing him. Indeed, he is desperate enough that the villains hire a ruthless assassin, Nash (Pierce Brosnan of "Die Another Day") to blow up the Embassy staff, including Abbott, who is attending Bill's birthday party at a fashionable British restaurant. Ironically enough, the Embassy staff are going to be served pressed duck. Our heroine escapes by the skin of her teeth because nobody remembered to bring Bill's birthday present. She leaves the restaurant and enters a shop across the street about the same time that Nash triggers the bomb. Imagine Nash's surprise when he spots Abbott in the street looking battered and worse for the wear from the experience. He whips out an automatic pistol with a silencer attached to it and pursues her.

Naturally, since Kate is the protagonist and the protagonist must survive, Nash's accuracy with his weapon is compromised enough that she escapes.  Later, adhering to protocol, she encounters Bill at a rendezvous safe zone in a public park. Shocked at her presence, Bill pulls out an automatic pistol and tries to kill Kate. The two struggle over Bill’s weapon, and Bill winds up accidentally shooting himself in the stomach. Following all the classic tropes since "North by Northwest," Kate ends up with the pistol in her fist. Moreover, Bill staggers into public view, and sightseers snap photos and lens videos of the dumbstruck Kate several steps behind the mortally wounded Talbot with the pistol conspicuously held in her hand. Of course, she denies her guilt but then takes flight. Now, the video has gone viral, and Kate's superior, Sam Parker (Dylan McDermott of "In the Line of Fire"), is trying to reach her before British authorities with shoot-on-site orders can catch her. Indeed, the troubled U.S. Ambassador, Maureen Crane (Angela Bassett of “Waiting to Exhale”) contacts British security expert Paul Anderson (James D’Arcy) and grants him clearance to kill Abbott. The first half-hour goes by really rapidly despite its formulaic shenanigans, and McTeigue generates an air of urgency as Kate takes it on the lam and Nash resolves to liquidate her. Kate enjoys extraordinary luck eluding the authorities and Nash is the kind of assassin who likes to tie up as many loose ends as possible. Incredibly, she manages to impersonate a tourist and gets back to the United States in time to barely take down Nash. The finale atop a Big Apple skyscraper with Jovovich battling it out with Brosnan will have you on the edge of your seat holding your breath. Not only does "Survivor" live up to its generic title but it also is a terrific little thriller.

FILM REVIEW OF ''NON-STOP" (2014)

Despite its shoddy CGI shots of a bogus jetliner plunging earthward with two jet fighters flanking it, "Non-Stop" (**1/2 OUT OF ****) qualifies as an extremely preposterous but thoroughly entertaining airborne mystery-thriller.  At 61-years of age, rugged Liam Neeson stars as troubled U.S. Air Marshal William Marks. Not only has Marks survived the death of his cancer-ridden, adolescent daughter, but he has also experienced a devastating divorce along with the loss of his 25-year job as a New York City Police Department detective. Meantime, the unshaven Marks has deteriorated into a guilt-ridden, nicotine-addicted, alcoholic plagued by memories of his grim past. At one point during this tense as well as terse PG-13-rated melodrama, our hero exposes his clay feet and describes himself as a deplorable dad.  A flawed hero usually wins an audience’s sympathy, and the scruffy Neeson emerges as an affable enough protagonist with a dark mood or two. He winds up tangling with a homicidal hijacker who has skewered his authority in the eyes of his superiors. 

Spanish director Jaume Collet-Serra of “Orphan” and rookie writers John W. Richardson, Christopher Roach, and Ryan Engle challenge us with a gallery of unusual suspects when they aren’t playing a game of charades with us about the hijacker's identity.  Naturally, they dole out red herrings galore to throw us off the scent. Unless you’re blessed as a psychic, you may have a difficult time exposing the perpetrator.  Cunningly, for the better part of its white-knuckled 106 minutes, Collet-Serra keeps a variety of paranoid passengers bottled up inside the cramped confines of an airliner and kindles sufficient tension within this combustible setting after our hero discovers a ticking time-bomb on board.  Rarely does Collet-Serra and company relieve the tension by cross-cutting to exterior scenes of ground personnel until the end.  Indeed, you may find yourself feeling a little claustrophobic before an explosive but formulaic finale. Unfortunately, "Non-Stop" suffers from a dire lack of plausibility, but the filmmakers compensate with a compelling mystery, slickly staged combat action scenes, and a brisk, snappy pace that never lets up. Although neither as gripping as either "Flightplan" nor as serious as 9/11 hijacking epic"United 93," "Non-Stop" generates more than enough suspenseful, edge-0f-the-seat seconds to offset its superficial moments. What it does wrong may be overlooked charitably enough because it is a movie instead of a real-life predicament.  Whoever heard of a cop accepting a gun from a man that he doesn’t know and then neglecting to see if the firearm is loaded?  The cast is strong and does a good job of diverting us from the identity of the hijacker. 

William Marks isn’t having the time of his life as an undercover U.S. Federal Air Marshal when he boards British Aqualantic Flight 10 heading for Heathrow.  Initially, he coaxes an anxious little girl aboard the 767 airliner after he recovers the plush toy she left behind. What better way could the filmmakers have aligned our sympathies with the hero than by showing him sticking up for a lonely little girl on her first flight.  Ironically, Marks loses it every time the plane that he is guarding takes off. He wraps a ribbon around his hand that once belonged to daughter before she succumbed to cancer. Later, when Flight 10 reaches its half-way point across the Atlantic, suspicious text messages show up on the Marks’ secure phone by means of the aircraft’s WiFi.  Grimly, Marks realizes with mounting dread that his wily, anonymous adversary is undoubtedly a passenger aboard Flight 10. Basically, according to these messages, a person will die every 20 minutes until $150 million is wired to a specific bank account.  The big surprise is that the dough lands in Marks’ own bank account and his own people on the ground disown him. Eventually, chief pilot Captain David McMillan (Linus Roache of “Batman Begins”) insists that Marks surrender his badge and his automatic pistol.  Despite deep misgivings, our unhappy hero complies with the captain’s request, but this doesn’t discourage him from ferreting out the perpetrator with the help of some passengers,primarily frequent-flyer business woman, Jen Summers (Julianne Moore of “Carrie”) who looks pretty suspicious herself; a balded, NYPD cop (Corey Stroll of (“House of Cards”); former U.S. soldier Tom Bowen (Scoot McNairy of “Killing Them Softly”), and a kindly Arab, Dr. Fahim Nasir (Omar Metwally of “Munich”).  Along the way, Marks discovers an attaché case packed with cocaine as well as a bomb.  By this time, Marks has been thoroughly incriminated as the hijacker thanks to a passenger who has caught some of our hero’s questionable actions on video and has somehow wired them to news agencies.  The situation grows even worse when Captain McMillan dies inexplicably from poisoning while he is flying the jetliner.  Nobody can enter the flight deck where the pilot and co-pilot stay, and this bit of skullduggery really gives Marks as well as the audience something to think about as the seconds to doom tick inexorably ahead. 

“Non-Stop” doesn’t let up until the last minute when all hope seems to be lost not only for the passengers but also our hero.  Meantime, little else can be said about this exciting, nerve racking, nail-biter without divulging important plot points.  Interestingly enough, Oscar winning “12 Years A Slave” actress Lupita Nyong'o appears in a minor role as one of several flight attendants.  Altogether, Liam Neeson fans should be pleased with most of what occurs in “Non-Stop.”