Regardless of how one feels about him personally, you can’t entirely deny that Mel Gibson knows how to direct a movie. Braveheart, The Passion of the Christ and Apocalypto are all, at worst, competently made features that speaks to a creative awareness of the craft. The Gibson that made those movies, however, isn’t anywhere to be seen with Flight Risk, a shockingly amateur, contained “thriller” that seems to reflect the lack of quality that has laced his film career over the last decade or so.
Also seemingly content with damaging his own once-solid movie career, Mark Wahlberg headlines proceedings here, doing the most as Daryl, an all-too-talkative (and awfully haired) pilot who’s been hired to charter a private plane across the Alaskan wilderness to deliver a fugitive (Topher Grace‘s Winston) and the Air Marshal overseeing his hand-off; Michelle Dockery giving too honest of a performance as Madolyn in a film that doesn’t deserve an ounce of sincerity.
The film is a three-hander between Wahlberg, Grace and Dockery – save for some questionable voice actors, including a bizarrely never seen Leah Remini – as Daryl, unsurprisingly, reveals himself to be a hired gun to take out Winston, whose wealth of information on all the criminals he assisted makes him a threat to the wrong people. The single setting and the potential in an ever-shifting power dynamic between the trio could have easily given way to something of note, but Jared Rosenberg‘s script never has a handle on the action or the intrigue that gives way to, with the 91 minutes adding up to little more than Dockery having to fly the plane as she takes orders from a grounded pilot and uncovers double crossings within her department.
Wahlberg being incapacitated for large chunks of play doesn’t help either. He’s not giving a great performance, but he’s delivering the type of scenery chewing Flight Risk needs. Awful-to-average dialogue and a spectacularly inexplicable hair choice result in the actor hamming it up in the type of movie that lives and dies off its villain, and because the limited setting and cast only allow so much room to play with, he isn’t able to remotely save such a C-grade film from elevating its so bad status to so bad it’s good. Tragically, Flight Risk is just so bad.
You shouldn’t really be entering Flight Risk with the highest of expectations – are we expecting much of a Mel Gibson or Mark Wahlberg feature in 2025? – but it certainly doesn’t help its case that even the poster art indicates an entirely different movie than what we get. Wahlberg’s stoic face, adorned with cuts and bruises, gives major heroic vibes, with the tagline “Y’all need a pilot?” suggesting a ‘Die Hard on a plane’ type scenario, where the everyman archetype saves the day. Give me that tried scenario over this mess any day. And that’s not to slight Dockery stepping into the hero role, as it’s great to see the actress enjoy her time in the genre, and she appears more than capable in such a setting, but she isn’t well served by the script or Gibson’s direction.
I was ready to have fun with Flight Risk, and there are initial moments that showed promise of the type of 90s/early 2000s mid-budget studio effort it was seemingly going to emulate, but ultimately Gibson’s unable to land this thing successfully. He doesn’t even revert to autopilot, instead content with a crash landing, failing to let us brace for any immediate impact.
ONE AND A HALF STARS (OUT OF FIVE)
Flight Risk is now screening in Australian theatres. It will open in theatres in the United States on January 24th, 2025.
