Non-Stop

The aircraft in Jaume Collet-Serra’s 2014 thriller is not an aircraft. Production designer Alec Hammond built a fuselage from scratch in a Queens warehouse, on Boeing 767 lines, for the invented carrier Aquatlantic. The outer skin came in two window panels that locked together and lifted on a hinge Hammond likened to an old Mercedes gull wing door. A linear bearing dolly track ran up each aisle, rigged in under five minutes, letting Collet-Serra cover seventy percent of the cabin without stopping; the lights hid in the windows and overhead bins. Aisles are wider and the ceiling higher than the real thing, because Liam Neeson is six foot four. The second device is texting. Threats are printed straight onto the screen and the conceit is played with: the words fracture when the phone cracks, shake in turbulence and drift around Marks as he loses his footing, so the film never cuts to a handset. The money was mostly French and British, yet the shoot stayed in New York, at York Studios in Maspeth. A good fit if you want a camera that never leaves the cabin and do not mind messages printed over the action. Not for viewers who need the motive produced in the last stretch to hold up; that is where complaints gathered.