Insanity cinema may have peaked early in 2025 thanks to Flight Risk (now streaming on VOD services like Amazon Prime Video). First, it marks the return of Madman Mel Gibson as a director, his first since 2016’s Hacksaw Ridge landed him an Oscar nomination, and also his smallest-scale, lowest-budget filmmaking effort yet, since the guy’s been a sociopolitical hot potato for the last couple decades. And second, it stars Mark Wahlberg With Male Pattern Baldness – yes, yikes – as a googly-eyed maniac who gnashes the scenery like it’s his first meal in a week. The movie plays out almost entirely in the cabin of a small plane, so Gibson’s signature big-spectacle style (e.g. Braveheart and that one Jesus movie) had to be pared down for this bare-bones, 91-minute thriller, which hopes to be a nice-’n’-tense chamber piece. And it is, sort of.
The Gist: Our first eyeful of this movie is phony as hell, a heavily CGI’ed establishing shot of fake snow falling outside a scuzzy Alaska motel. Not great, Bob! Winston (Topher Grace) is sitting inside his dingy room microwaving noodles and being startled by a moose outside the window when BAM, the cops kick down the door and arrest him. As all wiry, weaselly guys with boring side-part haircuts in movies inevitably are, Winston’s a crooked accountant who’s been functioning as a laundromat for a big-time mob boss’s moolah. And right in line with wiry-weaselly side-part mob accountants in movies, he immediately tells the feds he wants to save his own ass and make a deal and rat on the crook and go into witness protection. They agree. Bigger fish to fry, and all that.
They’ve gotta get Winston out of Bent Armpit, Alaska first, so Deputy U.S. Marshal Madolyn Harris (Michelle Dockery) is gonna babysit him on a private flight back to the continental States. And much to Winston’s chagrin, they’re not taking a swanky minibar’d plane with wifi and cushy seats, but rather a rattletrap Cessna piloted by a nicotine-gum-chomping chatterbox Texas good ol’ boy who we’ll soon learn isn’t really named Daryl Booth (Wahlberg), but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Winston takes one look at the vessel and whines, “It’s a kite with seatbelts!”, Grace clearly relishing the opportunity to channel Luke Skywalker’s declaration that the Millennium Falcon is a hunk of junk.
So what we have here is two jokers and one serious no-nonsense U.S. Marshal taking a jalopy on a bumpy 75-minute flight, which means the movie pretty much plays out in real time. The pilot chonks his gum and blabbers on and on. The fugitive complains that he doesn’t really need to be in these shackles and cuffs (he has a point; he’s as threatening as a newborn giraffe). And the Marshal just grits her teeth and guts it out in true it’s a living fashion.
The twist here is, and this isn’t a spoiler, promise: The trip goes poorly! What, did you think Madman Mel was going to make a movie consisting of three clashing personalities exchanging witty dialogue? “Daryl” isn’t who he says he is of course – he’s a maniac hired by the mob boss to turn the Marshal and the witness into wormfood. Now, logic dictates that “Daryl” keep his true motive under his toupee for as long as possible, but the movie might be boring if he did that. Besides, if Madolyn takes him out, who’s gonna fly the plane? Methinks he’s got them over a barrel.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: As far as tense-action-playing-out-at-a-few-thousand-feet thrillers go, Chloe Grace Moretz battled a World War II-era CG gremlin in Shadow in the Cloud, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt never left the cockpit for 90 minutes in hijacking thriller 7500. Dockery also turned up in in-the-air Liam Neeson vehicle Non-Stop.
Performance Worth Watching: Go ahead. Try not to stare in awe at Wahlberg’s mostly hairless crown. I sat transfixed, like I was gawking at the last dodo bird in existence. He’s also pretty gross and funny in the role, chucking out his teeth in an overbite, his bulgy eyes generating potently off-putting evil-sicko vibes.
Memorable Dialogue: Madolyn grabs the yoke and navigates a terrifying near-miss, prompting Wahlberg to cackle, “I just made a Jackson Pollock in my pants!”
Sex and Skin: None.
Our Take: You’d think an old pro like Gibson would ratchet up the intensity for a taut, economical genre flick like Flight Risk, but he never really makes us grip the couch cushions with sweaty hands. He at least holds our attention for the duration, but the screenplay – a former Black List script by first-timer Jared Rosenberg – contrives to drop Wahlberg, the most entertaining component of the movie and the driving force of the conflict, from the drama for chunks of screen time. The film’s inability to sustain high-level tension derives more from plotting than direction, the need for a rewrite – and surely a limited budget, reportedly a modest $25 million – tying Gibson’s hands to a degree.
This leaves Dockery with the thankless task of being the glue that holds the movie together, playing the responsible straight woman across from a Grace’s wisecrackery and Wahlberg’s putrid bad-guy characterization (“You remind me of a gal I used to fiddle with,” he says to a surely icked-out Madolyn). The Madolyn character is resourceful enough to not only grab the yoke and take control, but also to make a series of satellite-phone and radio calls so she can root out – worm out? Dig out? Sniff out? Sniff out! – a mob-connected mole within her own agency. I’m torn between believing that the limited use of Wahlberg in this particular mode feeds us more potent, concentrated oogyness, and thinking more Wahlberg could’ve pushed a medium-goofy movie into full-blown highly entertaining looney-tunes mode.
Gibson and Rosenberg’s storytelling choices lead to predictable bursts of peril, e.g., tussles in the cabin that find Grace shouting “Don’t shoot him, we NEED him!” and anxiety-ridden moments where non-pilots are forced to be pilots. There are brief moments of Gibson’s signature sadism – in case you haven’t noticed, dude’s got a fetish for extreme violence to rival Sylvester Stallone’s – and button-pushing dialogue that teeters on the edge of being annoying, if not offensive. But we’re left with the sense that either Gibby’s heart isn’t fully in it, or he’s lost some of his behind-the-camera mojo. Say what you will about the man and his ugly off-screen antics, but he’s definitely been a far better filmmaker than this.
Our Call: I can’t say in good conscience that Flight Risk is worth paying to watch. It’s modestly entertaining in its best moments. But I suggest you SKIP IT until you can marvel at the unseemly Wahlberg pate for free.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.