Flight Risk: Movie Review

Cast: Mark Wahlberg, Michelle Dockery, Topher Grace
Director: Mel Gibson

Mel Gibson returns to being behind the camera for the first time since 2016's Hacksaw Ridge with this chamber piece set on board a small plane.

When US Marshal Madolyn Harris (Downton Abbey's Dockery) arrests Winston, a wise-cracking accountant (That 70s Show's Grace), he offers to inform against his Mafia boss to save his own neck. But with time running out to get Winston to court, she's forced to take a flight piloted by Mark Wahlberg's gum-chewing hillbilly.

However, it soon turns out not everything is as it appears.

Flight Risk isn't a bad film per se.

It knows exactly what it is and what it wans to be, but somehow it lacks the tension needed to effectively draw out its 90 minute run time (a blessing in these days of overstretched movies).

Falling into a formulaic trap of needless jolts throughout (something which is as bumpy as the turbulence on the film's flight), the film betrays some of the unsettling menace that Wahlberg brings so brilliantly to the table as the unhinged and unnamed pilot, whose motives are murky at best, and murderous in intent.

From a flailing toupee to continual sneers and improvised nastiness, Wahlberg is the sleaziest best part of a movie that seems almost afraid to dip its toes into where it wants to go.

Dockery is solid and serious as the US Marshal whose past hides a secret and Grace is perfectly fine as the gibbering under pressure criminal. But it doesn't feel like there's enough to keep the film going - even if with its flaws, it has frustrating moments of what could have been.

Gibson is workmanlike behind the camera, failing to capitalise on the option for close ups in small spaces to build tension - but his execution of the film's script, which sat on the 2020 Black List, doesn't quite hit the highs it could be.

It's not a complete crash landing, but Flight Risk feels more like a ride that's as down as it is up throughout.