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Review: Flight Risk is both Trash and ‘Cinema’

Michelle Dockery as Madelyn and Mark Wahlberg as Booth in Flight Risk. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Lionsgate

Nearly six years ago Martin Scorsese re-ignited a debate by attempting to define cinema. This catapulted the film community into a passionate battle of taste versus vibes. Mel Gibson knows about high and low cinema. He spun 90s Box Office gold into a Best Picture Oscar, before sidestepping into bigotry and religious fervour, which, inexplicably, led to a critical renaissance.

So what does he do nine years after making the award-winning Hacksaw Ridge? He makes a tight 90-minute garbage plane movie with Mark Wahlberg.

The swimming scene in Moonlight, the angular shots of The Brutalist, the breathtaking singing of Portrait of a Lady on Fire, the tennis ball in Challengers are all well met by Gibson, who gives us Michelle Dockery repeatedly punching a tied-up Wahlberg while screaming insults in his face.
Flight Risk is not subtle, but it is extremely cathartic.

Mob accountant Winston (Topher Grace) is tracked down to a remote Alaskan bolthole by Dockery’s US Marshal, Madelyn. Madelyn wants Winston to testify against his boss. So, for narrative reasons, she transports her ‘flight risk’ informant to Anchorage in a tiny biplane. Cue the introduction of hick pilot, Booth (Wahlberg). Things start to go wrong over the snowy mountains as Booth is revealed to be someone else entirely, someone with a taste for torture and a nefarious plan.

For 91 minutes Flight Risk is breakneck, base and ridiculous. Writer Jared Rosenberg’s Black List script is relentless. It’s coupled with some surprise casting decisions. Wahlberg does his best Nic Cage as a sociopathic dirtbag, and the woman known for cutting remarks on Downton Abbey plays a macho cop. And Topher Grace plays, well, Topher Grace. It’s impressive how Dockery holds attention when faced with a series of escalating conflicts coming from in and outside the tiny biplane.

Suspending disbelief is essential to enjoying Flight Risk, but this is not a Netflix movie. Too many outrageous things happen each minute for viewers to ever get bored.

The dialogue is rough, the moral compass is all over the place, and the film is needlessly violent, but there is no denying Gibson’s technique. The way he cuts action all around the plane and delivers overlong close-ups keep the story tight and claustrophobic. And then, just when there has been so much action, the film simply ends.

Flight Risk feels like a 90s film from Gibson’s heyday. A crass, trashy, innovative story that pumps on the emotions instead of the breaks.

Flight Risk opens in UK cinemas on 24th January 2025.

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