Neeson's Die-Hard on a Plane

THERE seems to be no stopping Liam Neeson's late-career surge into the action-hero genre. After his surprising success as a soft-spoken, hard-nosed security expert in the Taken series, he gets another outing as a gun-toting good guy in Non-Stop, an airborne adventure that's part whodunnit, part psychological thriller and total nonsense.

At 61, Neeson is less of a smart-ass than Bruce Willis and a kinder, gentler version of Jason Statham. He's not a conventional action hero - his role as Rob Roy (1995) notwithstanding - but he projects a quiet confidence and an inner calm that is believable and goes down well with global audiences.

Non-Stop, or Die Hard on a Plane, tries to tweak a predictable narrative by giving the hero a set of weaknesses, and also by concealing the identity of the villain via a silly plot device involving text messages. To convey a sense of unease among the audience, the movie takes place within the familiar confines of a commercial airliner - albeit one in which a lot of killing goes on.