It’s been nearly a decade since once bonafide movie star and Oscar-winning filmmaker Mel Gibson sat himself in the director’s chair; even in 2016, at the height of #MeToo, a man with a long history of problematic statements managed to snag some Oscar noms for his warmed-over WWII epic “Hacksaw Ridge.” But it seems times have fallen hard on ol’ Mel lately, and his big directorial comeback sits in the cramped pilot’s seat of a low-budget, high-concept January thriller. “Flight Risk,” with its bonkers casting (Mark Wahlberg as a crazy balding charter pilot assassin) and ridiculous poster tagline (“Y’all need a pilot?”), occasionally teases out the kind of sleazy fun action-movie enthusiasts might reclaim in a few years’ time. But as it sits in this passenger’s estimation, “Flight Risk” is a supremely bumpy ride that doesn’t quite justify its logline.
The elevator pitch to Jared Rosenberg’s too-lean script is simple but, to its credit, effective: A disgraced US Marshal (Michelle Dockery) gets her chance to redeem herself by escorting a government witness (a weaselly Topher Grace) from his hiding spot in rural Alaska to Anchorage, where he’ll be sent to government protection until he can testify against a spooky mob boss for all the books he’s cooked for the man. Problem is, it’s not long after their charter plane takes off that they both realize that the pilot, a Southern drawl-spouting loudmouth theoretically named Daryl Booth (Wahlberg), isn’t who he says he is: He’s a hitman who’s killed the real pilot and plans to dispatch them once they land wherever he’s taking them. With a bit of luck and fortitude, they managed to dispatch him and tie him in the back. But they’re still thousands of feet in the air in a teeny plane with little fuel and no idea where they’re going (or how to fly a crop duster like this).
That actually sounds awesome, right? And the lean 90-minute runtime (which counts down practically in real time) is a very tempting sell for a lean chamber piece like this. But what happens in that 90 minutes has to actually entertain, which is where “Flight Risk” runs into some real turbulence. Rosenberg’s script saddles its characters with some real doo-doo dialogue; Dockery’s Madelyn is saddled with all the glum, serious work of barking orders and talking to a scant few voices over the radio (like Leah Remini as her immediate superior and Maaz Ali as a ridiculously flirty pilot teaching her the ropes of Basic Flight), and Grace’s Winston vomits out more groan-inducing sitcom quips than a late-season episode of “That ’70s Show.” (Yes, there is a Spirit Airlines joke. Try not to faint.)
As for Wahlberg, he’s clearly the marquee draw, both for name recognition and sheer chutzpah. And to his credit, Crazy Mark is the best mode to be in, and he gnashes and gurns his way through his dialogue with enough mustard to cover a dozen Coney dogs. The bizarre decision to make his Daryl wear a toupee, which comes off in the fray, leaving him with a most unfortunate barely-combed-over crown of hair, is fun, and Wahlberg’s childlike delivery makes stinkers like “Winnie, did you make a poop?” a welcome pop of personality. But he spends the vast majority of the film’s runtime knocked out or quiet in the back of the plane while the two television actors eat up all the screentime, which severely diminishes “Flight Risk”‘s fun quotient. The best moments in the film are when Daryl taunts and sneers at his goody-two-shoes adversaries, owning the space with a shit-eating grin even while tied up in the rear. But you search the horizon a bit too long looking for those moments, when Gibson and Rosenberg waste their time trying to urge Dockery and Grace to have even just a bit of chemistry.
If this were, say, led by Liam Neeson and directed by Jaume Collet-Serra, a movie like “Flight Risk” could sing. (What I’m trying to say, I guess, is see “Non-Stop” instead.) But even with a post-landing climax so bizarre in its Looney Tunes physics that it feels like a fever dream, Gibson’s return to the pilot’s seat fails to take flight.
