The big twist in Flight Risk is that Mark Wahlberg is a balding bad guy pretending to be a regular joe pilot. Mel Gibson’s latest directorial effort since Hacksaw Ridge is smaller on scale. Every now and again, a filmmaker does a movie like this. I’ve always thought big-name directors sometimes work better with smaller-scale movies because they prove themselves as great storytellers.
Look at David Lynch’s The Straight Story or Barry Levinson’s Wag the Dog. Flight Risk was reportedly filmed in 22 days. About 85-90 percent of the 91 minutes takes place inside a small airplane. But sometimes director make mistakes. Take Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope, which is set within a Manhattan penthouse apartment in real time. It might have been a challenge for Hitchcock but the story barely holds our attention for the 80 minutes of runtime.
The same can be said for Flight Risk. Winston (Topher Grace), an accountant for the mob who has turned an informant, is hiding out in a desolate Alaskan motel when he is apprehended by Madolyn Harris (Michelle Dockery) with the U.S. Marshal Service. She needs to take him from the town to Anchorage and that’s where the pilot (Wahlberg) calling himself “Daryl Booth” from Texas comes in. He’s actually a hitman.
Ok, first things first. The Mashals Service would never allow Harris to travel alone with Winston. They’d at least be another deputy marshal and an Alaskan state trooper. This reminds me of the scene in Bulletproof, where they escort Adam Sandler’s character from the airport hangar all the way out the length of two football fields to the plane, so a sniper can take everyone but him and Damon Wayans Sr.’s character out. This would never happen in real life.
Also why would the hitman bother leading Harris on that he is a legit pilot. Why not just walk up to the plane and shoot both Harris and Winston, catching them off guard? What is his plan to do while they’re in the air especially since it seems the only place to land is Anchorage where authorities would be waiting?
This is the only script that is credited to writer Jared Rosenberg. How could Gibson be attracted to it? I guess he thought he could make a good claustrophobic thriller. But there is never a sense of claustrophobia. Also, even though “Daryl Booth” is dangerous, why doesn’t Harris just kill him? At one point, I thought she might be smart and toss him out of the plane. But she has too many opportunities to make sure he doesn’t get free and he still does. You know, otherwise the movie would be over after half an hour.
Also at the beginning of the flight, Harris is having to talk to the pilot on headsets but later in the movie, they lose those. Winston can’t even get Harris’ attention when he notices the ruse first. Because Harris has to talk to multiple people on the phone, who may or may not the corrupt ones who got the mob to assign the hitman. But you can guess which one it is.
Over a decade ago, Dockery was in Non-Stop, which might not have been the best thriller set on a plane but it was a nice popcorn movie thriller. This tries to be that type of movie but Dockery plays the character too serious while Wahlberg gets upstaged by his bald head. Grace seems to do another variation of Eric Forman which makes me believe if he doesn’t have the abilities to play a character differently.
Flight Risk was released about a week after Gibson was named a “special ambassador” by Donald Trump to improve “troubled Hollywood.” Considering how bad this movie is and how shitty Trump’s choices are, this is just par for the course.
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 