The viewing experience of Mel Gibson’s Flight Risk is incredibly perplexing. On the one hand, we can see why Gibson would be attracted to such material–and setting. A claustrophobic, one-location thriller that visualizes the incessant sense of dread one feels while on an airplane with a serial killer hunting both protagonists down. Seems like a project right up his alley. On the other hand, the directorial imprint he’s known for in films like Braveheart and Apocalypto isn’t present here. One even wonders if Gibson ultimately directed the picture because it severely lacks the pulse and energy of his most-known productions. Even The Passion of the Christ, which I’m admittedly not a fan of, does feel like something Gibson could only bring to life.
Has his Hollywood reputation fallen, relegated to direct mind-numbing actioners with a paper-thin script and shoddy visuals? Maybe, but an endless swarm of controversies, which led him to be blacklisted in Hollywood for several decades, didn’t stop him from making Hacksaw Ridge. That film was not only critically acclaimed and a commercial success, but it ultimately ended up being nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Picture. And that was after all of the most significant controversies surrounding the individual. When directing a movie, Gibson never phones it in, regardless if you don’t resonate with what he showcases on screen.
That’s why it feels so strange to watch his latest directorial endeavor Flight Risk, because, for a good chunk of its lean 91-minute runtime, no frame feels like Mel Gibson directed it, but rather a journeyman who kowtows to the studio’s demands with little to no personal flair behind the camera. In a perfect world, this would be nothing more than a disposable January movie. The initial action beats that open the film, with the arrest of informant Winston (Topher Grace) by Deputy U.S. Marshal Madolyn Harris (Michelle Dockery), are sloppily edited and poorly shot. We can barely see anything going on and only understand what’s happening once the scene is over. This is stuff that would have been unacceptable just nine years ago, from Gibson’s own directorial standards in visualizing the horrors of World War II in Hacksaw Ridge. Add a garish CGI deer that fills the frame in its opening section, and the movie is off to a somewhat rough start.
It marginally improves when Mark Wahlberg appears with the worst southern accent you’ll ever hear (though every part of it is intentional) as Daryl Booth, the pilot who will take Madolyn and Winston to Seattle so the latter can testify in a trial. However, they gradually learn that Daryl isn’t who he says he is and has been sent to assassinate the informant, so he never makes it to the courtroom. It’s a cookie-cutter closed-set actioner that could’ve worked had Gibson cared, but it doesn’t seem like he gives a damn, which is the biggest shame of it all.
Mel Gibson Flimsily Directs Flight Risk
Throughout his directing projects, Gibson always wants the audience to pay attention to his images and feel each ounce of physical or psychological pain inflicted upon his protagonists. Some have dubbed this approach “Gibson Gore,” which is probably the best way to put it. In Flight Risk, seems to want to follow that same throughline, especially when blocking the camera with specific rack focuses to divert our attention to the foreground, while Wahlberg’s Booth plots to escape the clutches of his handcuffs, unseen by us, in the background. That would’ve been successful if he and cinematographer Johnny Derango actively played with the small, confined space of the plane but Gibson seems disinterested in making it a living, breathing part of Flight Risk’s identity.
It’s one of the reasons why we, as a moviegoing society, watch closed-set thrillers. The room—or the location—is as much of a character as the humans populating it. For instance, Gibson and Derango’s camera will careen around the plane and eventually show us a knife hidden under a seat, a piece of information that only the audience (and, by extension, Daryl) know. Throughout the film, he will continuously cut back to it in critical moments, either in a tense exchange or during a scene of intense peril. We, as the audience, hold on to it as Madolyn and Winston scramble to fly a plane with zero experience, but it seldom returns as a crucial element in the tension-building within the aircraft. That plane seems secondary to the intrigue, but it should be as significant of a part to play in the movie as the protagonists who must find a way to fly it to their desired location successfully.
When the knife eventually makes its grand comeback, it does impact the story, but one wishes suspense was more effectively built around it than separating the story in two distinct halves: phone conversations between Madolyn and various, faceless, supporting players, and frequent taunting from Daryl to enact his sadistic plan in motion. Interspersing these halves are momentary edge-of-your-seat scenes of thrilling action, including an effective taser confrontation between Madolyn and Daryl, but they rarely occur to make an active impact in the eyes of the viewer.
Mark Wahlberg Gives His Best Performance in Years
Credit where credit is due, Wahlberg is having the time of his life playing a truly demented antagonist, perhaps the only saving grace out of this whole affair. It’s been a while since the actor has given a performance worthy of his career-best turn in Michael Bay’s Pain & Gain, which bathed in excessive depravity throughout its two-hour runtime. It’s only natural, then, that Wahlberg would ever take inspiration from such a movie to feed his character, arguably the best role he’s done since Bay’s film.
Busier than ever with his various commercial endeavors, Wahlberg unfortunately lost the touch that made him a charismatic actor, playing roles in indistinguishably bland productions such as The Family Plan, The Union, and Me Time. With Flight Risk, he’s at least infusing life in a production that’s devoid of any, even with Grace and Dockery trying their hardest to make Jared Rosenberg’s screenplay work. Grace, unfortunately, can’t overcome the badgering, quippy nature of his character, while Dockery fares just slightly better, even if her post-Downton Abbey career has sadly been full of one unimpressive project after the last.
It's only when Flight Risk arrives at the landing sequence that the movie begins to awaken from its slumber and give a slight sign of life through a climax filled with so much playful violence that only the creator of “Gibson Gore” could ever visualize it this way. It’s devilishly twisted and concludes the movie in such an explosive fashion one wishes the entire production was bathed in the codes of exploitation filmmaking rather than being insecure about what generic conventions it needs to appropriate. By then, however, there’s no more momentum, and the film comes to a rushed conclusion as if we’re primed to forget it right after the credits have finished rolling. The lights turn back on, forcing us to leave and think about better movies on the horizon than the brisk 91 minutes we spent on a non-moving plane with a bald Mark Wahlberg instead.
Flight Risk releases exclusively in theatres on January 24.