Mel Gibson has had an up-and-down and down career in Hollywood. As an actor, he has thrived in franchises such as the Lethal Weapon films, but as a director, he’s done even better. He won multiple Oscars for Braveheart and critical acclaim for many of his other movies like The Passion of the Christ and Hacksaw Ridge, to name a couple. His latest, Flight Risk is a fall from grace for this once-lauded director. 

Michelle Dockery plays a US Marshall who captures a runaway money launderer for a Boston gangster hiding out in Alaska. She has to try and get the man played by Topher Grace back to New York City to testify on the Moroni crime family. They get a little plane and its pilot, played by Mark Wahlberg, to fly them from where they are to where they need to go. The problem is that Wahlberg’s character isn’t who he says he is, and the flight doesn’t go exactly as she planned.

Mark Wahlberg usually plays protagonists in his films, cops, FBI agents, and so forth. It’s a rarity that he plays the antagonist, but that’s the case in this film. He uses a Southern accent to disguise his real accent until he’s found out, and then he goes back to his Boston accent. While he usually has the Southern accent, he’s a bit over the top and comical as the pilot. He’s the comic relief in what’s otherwise a pretty serious story.  The story is pretty basic, and Wahlberg gives his all in a bland, one-note film. The script is pretty bad.  This was a glorified payday for him. I hope it was worth it for wearing that horrible bald cap. 

The other two main actors in the movie Dockery and Grace weren’t doing very well with the dialogue, though. Dockery was struggling with an American accent, and Grace was just going through the motions. When Wahlberg wasn’t on screen or just in the background scowling, it felt like someone was missing from the film. Little subplots were brought up to make the characters have some sort of meaning, but they didn’t care about them at all. These were horribly written characters.  Gibson and company had a hard time making them come across in a good way. They just felt like generic characters in a bad script.

The plane sequences were shot relatively well. Gibson switched back and forth between scenes shot on set inside the plane and footage shot by drones or other planes outside of the plane. The mix of both of these worked okay, but it still didn’t change how bad and formulaic this story was from beginning to end. Green screen shots weren’t very realistic. Even stalk footage of mountain ranges and other natural landscapes looked good. Overall, this wasn’t shot very well. I could tell this had to be a small budget, Gibson was working on.

One about this film I thought was funny was a home dispatcher at an airport who was interacting with Dockery’s character as she was flying the plane instead of Wahlberg’s character. The air control guy was trying to get a date with her and having her pay for dinner and so forth. This was some stuff in the context of this survival tale. Whoever added this to the script was a pretty smart guy because this was one of the few things that worked in this bland movie.

Flight Risk is a typical January movie. Lionsgate placed it in this late January slot to try to have a bit of counterprogramming from the late Oscar contenders that are coming out wide. Gibson has fallen regarding his direction of great films in the past. Those days are over for him. He took a payday, and so did the rest of the cast. Bad acting by Grace and Dockery couldn’t be saved by the over the top from Wahlberg. The script wasn’t very original, and as a whole, this was a waste of all of these fine people’s talents. Who knows, though maybe there is enough here for regular people to enjoy

.2 ½ stars

Dan Skip Allen