Bill finds Jen watching the news
report, which is building a psychological profile about him. They
reveal his daughter died of cancer when she was eight, which planted
the seeds of his madness as well as explaining why he had no current
pictures of her. A comment a news reporter makes about air marshals
being able to walk past security with no checks activates a light
bulb over Bill's head, so he goes back to Jack's body and finds the
bomb hidden inside his coke stash.
Exiting the bathroom he immediately
gets jumped by the cop and his buddies, trying to fight them off but
loses his gun in the process. They wrestle him to the ground,
ignoring his warnings about the bomb until Tom grabs the gun and
moves them away. Tom demands the truth so Bill tells them, something
he probably should have done WAY earlier to avoid most of this
clusterfuck. He admits everything on the news story about him was
true, confessing his sorrow over working instead of being with his
daughter as he was too afraid to watch her die. This tugs all the
right heartstrings, so Tom gives him his gun back and everyone backs
off.
Bill comes up with a plan to move the
bomb to the back of the plane and stack everything they have against
to hopefully lessen its blast, as well as having the plane lowered in
elevation to help alleviate the pressure if it does go off. And in
case you're wondering why they just don't throw it out of the plane,
the film is one step ahead of you with some kind of bullshit
explanation it'd set the bomb off... or something. Bill gives the
cop Jack's gun, asking him to take action in case the texter shows
himself.
An external shot of the plane follows,
with fighter planes flying alongside it to escort Kyle to the
designated landing area. They advise against lowering the plane's
altitude, which is of course the next thing Bill asks him to do.
Upon learning about the bomb Kyle agrees to do this, but it'll take
ten minutes as they'll be near enough to the landing area for him to
make it look like part of the natural descent.
Marenick calls again, saying they've
deposited the money into Bill's bank account. Once again Bill tries
to tell him what's going on, but Marenick is as good at ignoring
orders as Bill is. Marenick mentions they've all seen a video of
Bill roughing up the hostages that was uploaded by a passenger, Bill
looking up to see a man recording him that very second.
Bill demands his phone, finding it full
of videos. He plays the one back of him dragging Tom around,
noticing Tom stumbling over the man who was poisoned and causing him
to let out a very pronounced “OW!”. So this guy just ignored a
metal tip embedded in his chest for twenty minutes? This is cut with
footage of Tom nervously watching Bill learn the truth, bolting up
and grabbing the gun from the cop.
Bill draws his gun in retaliation, and we have
ourselves a standoff! Tom tries to shoot the cop but finds the gun
isn't loaded, throwing him down and somehow disappearing in the
fracas. Alright, at this point Tom IS a wizard because he just
vanished in a tiny enclosed space in PLAIN SIGHT. Bill shouts at the
cop the ammo is in a bag up in business class, the cop running there
to retrieve it. The cop can't find anything, Zack asking him if he's
looking for the bullets and proceeds to SHOOT HIM IN THE CHEST! THE
HELL?!
The noise distracts Bill, allowing him
to get disarmed by Tom who obviously has the powers of teleportation
because he appeared out of freaking nowhere. Tom goes on to give us
his origin story, as his father died in 9/11 so he joined the
military to make sure such a thing would never happen again. But the
war he fought made no sense to him, as he learned security was just a
lie and now wants to send a message to the world to illustrate that.
REALLY? Are we already at the point where 9/11 can be used in any
cookie cutter action movie now?
Answer: yes. This is going to be a
LONG decade of action movies methinks. Tom rants on more, but all I
get is his plan is to avenge his father's death by becoming the same
kind of terrorist that killed him. Why is it so hard to write a
villain with motivation that makes an ounce of sense anymore? I'm
not asking for something highly complex, just something that doesn't
make you sound like a drooling moron when you say it out loud. Zack,
also an ex-soldier, seems more into the money than whatever the fuck
Tom is rambling about, so there's your villains ladies and gentlemen!
All of that buildup for a wackjob who wants to kill people to make
people safer, and a guy who just wants to get paid.
Bill tells the two the plane will NOT
be descending, so they won't be able to parachute out as Zack is
preparing to do. Zack, who is certainly not ready to die, is about
to listen to Bill and disarm the bomb when Tom shoots him. Kyle
finally decides to take the plane down in spite of the fighter jets,
as gravity goes wonky and Tom gets send flying back. He recovers
quickly and starts firing at Bill, hitting only windows instead to
make things more chaotic as things begin getting sucked out of the
plane right after left.
Nancy distracts him by hitting him in
the face with a seat belt, which is awesome beyond words. Bill takes
this chance to grab Zack's gun and recreate the movie poster as he
scores a slow motion kill on Tom. BOOM HEADSHOT! Kyle hits 8,000
feet as we have less than a minute before the bomb goes off, which
gives Zack enough time to come back from the dead and attack Bill
with a knife.
Bill easily fights him off, leaving him
back by the bomb as it explodes. Bill runs to the front of the plane
as ALL HELL BREAKS LOOSE, diving safely behind a counter. The plane
begins falling apart as Kyle manages to land it in epic fashion. A
news reporter starts wrapping things up for us as Bill gets another
call from Marenick, who of course apologizes for everything. Bill
meets up with Jen, as the film ends with them playfully bantering
with each other and hinting at a hookup.
Cue the credits.
Whooo boy, THESE kind of movies. You
know the kind, where the villain is magically psychic to the point
where he makes Jigsaw from Saw look like a CHUMP? Where the
villain has every single little detail anticipated to absolute
perfection? Yeah, that's this movie.
The biggest plothole is early one with
the whole Jack's suitcase full of coke subplot. How in the world did
Tom and Zack get a bomb planted in there before he got on the plane?
How did they even find out he was a drug smuggler? How did they know
he and Bill would end up in a fight to the death in EXACTLY twenty
minutes, let alone know that Bill was going to win? What if Jack had
won and killed Bill (Volume 1)? That would have harshed their plan
pretty bad. I will give them a couple of points for guessing Jack
wouldn't want to land the plane so he could make his drug deal
though.
Although maybe not, because as we saw
Jack was all too ready to kill Bill (Volume 2) to protect his secret
so why wouldn't he just kill the weaselly looking Tom for threatening
him? What did Tom hold over his head anyway? See, these kind of
movies are all the same: they drop a headache inducingly stupid
revelation and then pile on tons of action to distract you so your
brain doesn't have time to process the stupidity it just saw.
Or how did Zack manage to stab the
pilot all the way from the bathroom? What, did the syringe also
double as a blow dart gun? How was it able to launch such a small
needle with enough velocity to penetrate his skin? What would Tom
have done if Bill wasn't dragging around him and giving him a chance
to easily poison someone? Just stabbed a random passenger and how
they also didn't notice a stabbing pain on their body?
Towards the end, Tom brags his and
Zack's plan was foolproof and they thought of EVERYTHING, but
everything in the movie is contrary to that. Pretty much their
entire plan occurs because of dumb luck and massive plotholes, which
doesn't exactly sell this movie as a masterful whodunnit thriller.
However, despite ALL of this, I was
still entertained the entire time. Jaume Collet-Serra certainly
knows how to pace a movie, as there wasn't a single moment where I
was bored. In this day and age of CGI nonsense and sixty million
subplots that go nowhere, this is about the highest praise I can give
a film. Neeson once again delivered because he's an actor first and
an action star second, which puts him light years ahead of the other
99% of the rest of the action heroes out there. He can say more with
a single pained look than anyone else can say with a paragraph of
cliched dialogue.
Julianne Moore and Lupita Nyong'o were
horribly wasted, especially Nyong'o who was in this thing for all of
a minute and did nothing. Moore was basically a RED herring (insert
drum roll here) meant to divert our attention from the bad guys, even
though there were virtually no clues to tip us off who they were.
Fortunately Nancy, played by Michelle Dockery of Downtown Abbey
fame, picked up all of their slack and had a great heroic moment
herself.
All in all, this was slightly better
than Unknown but I really can't recommend it unless you can
watch it free on TV. Hell, this almost felt like a made for TV movie
as you can even tell where the commercial breaks would go and there
were even a few scenes towards the end I was half-expecting to see an
ad for Wendy's or a cell phone company start playing.
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