"Flight Risk" Review

There is a thing called the "Black List" which names the favorite unproduced screenplays kicking around Hollywood that year. In 2020, the List included Jared Rosenberg's script for Flight Risk, a buzzy high-concept movie that eventually attracted Mel Gibson to direct and Mark Wahlberg to star. After watching it, I'm not sure what anyone saw in it.

 It opens with Winston (Topher Grace, That '70s Show) watching his Cup Noodles ramen cooking in a fritzing microwave in a rural Alaska motel. Suddenly, the door is kicked open and U.S. Marshals led by Madolyn (Michelle Dockery, Downton Abbey) storm in and arrest Winston who immediately offers to testify against the Moretti crime family, for which he was their accountant, in exchange for immunity and protection. She calls her superiors to see if they'll go for the deal and after a couple of days, the deal goes through.

 Needing to get back to civilization to catch a flight back to New York City, they charter a small plane to carry them to Anchorage. Because he's considered a flight risk (roll credits!), she handcuffs and shackles him to his seat behind the Pilot (Marky Mark, Ted). The Pilot is a chatty good ol' boy which annoys Madolyn, though not so much that she doesn't notice a scratch on his neck and a spot of blood on his sleeve after they take off over the mountainous wilderness.

 During the flight, Winston spots the pilot's license which is to be displayed and realizes the Pilot isn't him. Since she has headphones on to hear the Pilot and not Winston, who is an annoying chatterbox, he can't get her attention and being chained down he can't get her attention. Eventually, Madolyn catches the Pilot in a lie about knowing the pilot who flew her in and a struggle ensures revealing the Pilot killed the real pilot and is there to kill Winston and by circumstance Madolyn.

After managing to tase the Pilot, the big problem is that she doesn't know how to fly the plane, operate the radio, and the GPS seems to be out. Luckily, she has a satellite phone and is able to contact her boss who finds a pilot to talk her through things. But another problem is that in between sadistic threats of what he's going to do to them when he gets free by the Pilot, he keeps making references to details that he shouldn't know if he's just a hitman for the Morettis. Ruh-roh.

 While the premise of a three-hander in an enclosed space is sound, the script too patly doles out the revelations, red herrings and twists like how Madolyn has a Dark Secret in her past and hasn't been in the field for a while and Has Something To Prove, but doesn't know who to trust. Winston is just annoying and not in an amusing Leo Getz way. And other than Marky Mark shaving his head into a bald patch, his character seems almost too crazy to be trusted with an important hit job.

Gibson hasn't directed a film since his Oscar-nominated work in 2016's Hacksaw Ridge, following Apocalypto in 2006. What about this trifle attracted is eye is a mystery other than probably working with his Father Stu co-star Wahlberg. While the $25M budget is pretty small for movies these days, it's hard to see where the money went other than big salaries for Gibson and Wahlberg and some visual effects for the scale is remarkably small with only two sets and two locations, airports, the motel room and the plane itself.

 While not especially bad, Flight Risk just doesn't quite land with the effect that the folks who voted it to the Black List apparently saw. At least it's short, at a still slightly too long 91 minutes.

Score: 4/10. Catch it on cable/streaming.