On March 20, the action thriller «Flight Risk» starring Mark Wahlberg, Michelle Dockery and Topher Grace was released in cinemas. Mel Gibson is responsible for the production. The film is arriving in Ukrainian theaters with a noticeable delay and has already received reaction from audiences and critics, and it leaves much to be desired. We will discuss whether the numerous unattractive epithets addressed to her are deserved in our review.
Pluses:
Someone may find it an unimaginative but useful for one evening B movie from the 90s, and who are we to judge this choice; perhaps some scenes can cause at least some tension; Mark Wahlberg’s hairstyle, if you perceive the movie as a comedy;
Minuses:
Cringe-worthy moments, silly dialogues and laughter instead of suspense do not allow us to take this movie seriously; Mark Wahlberg’s hairstyle, if you take the movie as an action thriller;
«Flight Risk»
Genre action thriller
Director Mel Gibson
Starring Mark Wahlberg, Michelle Dockery, Topher Grace, Lea Remini (voice), Paul Ben-Victor (voice)
Premiere movie theaters
Year of release 2025
Website IMDb, official website
Somewhere in a godforsaken snowy motel in Alaska, where microwaves malfunction and badly drawn moose like to peer through the windows, tough U.S. Marshal Madolyn Harris arrests Winston, the fragile accountant for the Moretti crime family. He is to testify against his former employer in New York.
But they still have to get there. Madolyn and Winston plan to fly to Anchorage by private plane, and from there they will fly to their destination. But during the trip, the passengers realize that their friendly pilot, Daryl Booth, is not who he says he is.
Mel Gibson’s filmography, both as an actor and director, has plenty of good movies, but «Flight Risk» — is definitely not one of them.
Unfortunately, at this stage of his career, the star of the cult franchises «Mad Max» and «Lethal Weapon» does not shy away from splashing out not only on something passable and disposable, but also on outright nonsense that is not worthy of audience attention. One can think of «Hot Seat» (2022), or «Confidential Informant» (2023) with a phenomenal 0% positive review on Rotten Tomatoes, or last year’s «Boneyard», which is also useless. It seems that Mel is really too old for this shit.
But the aforementioned films are just acting routines, which for Gibson are nothing more than a way to make money. But he seems to be doing much better with directing. Right now he is developing is a sequel to «The Passion of the Christ». However, with the release of «Flight Risk», it is hard to believe that this is a Gibson’s movie, which literally coexists with «Hacksaw Ridge» (2016) in the director’s filmography. It is impossible to wrap your head around the fact that such a stillborn movie was released by the man who gave us «Braveheart» 30 years ago.
Apparently, the idea behind «Flight Risk» was to take on the height of a tense action thriller with survivalist elements, albeit a frank B movie with a 90s action movie twist. Plus, when the heroes find themselves in extreme circumstances and are forced to overcome them heroically, because they have nowhere to run in the plane — it’s always potentially interesting.
Here, it is worth mentioning «The Ice Road» (2021) —, a film made in roughly the same genre and also set in snowy landscapes, with the difference that the deadly journey there took place on the ground (and even on ice!), not in the air. With the same unpretentiousness, earthiness, and old-fashionedness, it is the action movie with Neeson that seems more winning, and precisely because it is perceived as what it was intended to be.
But «Flight Risk» repeatedly reminds us of something parodic, like the sketch «Cool Runnings» of the once popular television program «Pun». Because while watching it, you can’t help but smile uncontrollably at the ridiculousness that is happening on the screen — Mark Wahlberg’s hairstyle won’t let you lie. The problem is that the filmmakers didn’t intend for humor to be present in the movie.
The marketers responsible for the film’s promotion shot Gibson in the foot: albeit to a fashionable cover of the cult «Psycho Killer», it is truly aerobatics to so blatantly spoil the only twist in the trailer that provided at least some maneuver for surprise. However, with a minus sign. That is, when Wahlberg’s character pretends to be a pilot at the beginning and calmly boards the plane, and we already know who he really is, a logical question arises — why waste time on a cheap performance if everything is already clear?
These are the kinds of nonsensical episodes and absurd conversations that make up «Flight Risk». The result is an unnecessary, genre-less movie, which can only be of use if you don’t consider its extreme unpretentiousness a vice. Otherwise, to sit through the final credits is no less powerful an achievement than to make such a tortured, clumsy landing in that damned Anchorage.
