Flight Risk

After the scope of Braveheart, The Passion Of The Christ, Apocalypto and Hacksaw Ridge, Mel Gibson is working on a smaller canvas for his sixth directorial feature. The kind of action thriller Hollywood is supposed not to make anymore, Flight Risk is a chamber piece, confined almost entirely to a single location — a rickety plane described as a “kite with seat belts”. It may not be particularly novel but it is well made, well performed by a cast who understand the assignment, and has enough twists, turns and tweaks to formula to keep it fresh. It also features the scary sight and sound of Mark Wahlberg warbling his way through New Order’s ‘Blue Monday’. Be warned.

Appearing on the 2020 Black List of Hollywood’s hottest scripts (that year’s list also delivered Todd Haynes’ May December and Scott Derrickson’s upcoming The Gorge), Jared Rosenberg’s screenplay is stock stuff — a government agent, a witness needing protection, a killer, a rat in the house — but economically spun and well sustained.

A bit like an off-off Broadway version of Con Air, this pitches three characters stuck on a plane, playing mind games in-between bouts of brutal physical violence. As the flight heads towards Anchorage, there’s sabotaged navigation, birds hitting the windscreen, close shaves with mountainsides, an innovative use of sunglasses and the age-old debate about the dangers of firing weapons on board aircraft. With its human-sized stakes, bruising fights and Gibson’s name on the credits, it’s a bit like the ’90s never went away.

It’s the kind of generic action thriller where the Mob boss is called Moretti, the law enforcer has a troubled past, smart people do stupid things and characters come back from stab wounds, gun shots, flare hits, you name it, with jaw-dropping ease.

But what elevates Flight Risk is that it does have the odd touch of texture; Madelyn’s over-the-radio flirtation with the pilot (Maaz Ali) talking her plane down is a surprise and a delight. Also, Wahlberg, sporting an unflattering combover, has a ball playing the hitman: by turns giddy, pervy and sinister, he is an unnamed terminator made even more interesting because he couldn’t give a jot whether he lives or dies. He makes a more than worthy opponent for Michelle Dockery, who makes her one-note Clarice Starling-a-like appealing, and Topher Grace, whose nervy informant is fundamentally the comic relief. In short, a brisk, punchy, inoffensively silly blast of in-flight entertainment.