Flight Risk

• Directed by Mel Gibson
• January 24, 2025

A Deputy U.S. Marshal and a captured fugitive crossing the Alaskan wilderness find themselves in a situation where they can only trust each other.

When Flight Risk came out it received a fair bit of mockery and derision. Some of it deserved. Who thought what they did for the ‘pilot’ played by Mark Wahlberg was smart? Per reports Wahlberg shaved his head every day to give him a bald spot. It was funny in a serious movie. To cover the stubble quite visible in high def they used pancake makeup instead of an appliance of some type. Or just shaving the whole head.

I’m not sure how hard it is to film at a snow-covered motel or and get a moose head, but it looks like it might be very hard. Flight Risk opens (and stays) in Alaska. A moose bumps into a window startling the captured fugitive witness Winston (Topher Grace). My complaint is because both snow and moose are obvious CGI. Gibson breaks the illusion in the first five minutes! That use of CGI extends to the plane. You rented a plane but cannot rent a few more cameras for extra shots?

Winston is a constantly talking witness in a mob investigation and Deputy U.S. Marshal Madolyn Harris (Michelle Dockery) assigned to bring him to court is freshly back in the field after having screwed up earlier costing the life of a previous witness. That there is a big neon sign letting you know something is going to happen though in the context of the character she just think she’s finally got a second chance.

Dockery-as-Harris is rather dismissive of Winston and at first that is deserved. It is when things get fishy that it ceases to make much sense. She brushes him off too easily. Then there are the wounds that the Wahlberg killer failed to cover. The one on the neck is a bit excusable but bleeding through a shirt? The implication is he had a serious fight with the real pilot but failed to check for wounds>

Topher Grace has more or less aged into the part of a mob accountant. While on That ‘70s Show I could not have bought him as a nerdy accounting type, with the change in his hair color and a few wrinkles on his face I can now. A generally good actor he does well as the cowardly gabber.

Most of the film takes place on a small plane. I went into Flight Risk thinking it was more of an action film than it was the mystery it proved to be. Commercials showed the plane hitting a snowbank so I thought there was going to be some wilderness survival. I was led to believe Mark Wahlberg’s part in this was much more significant than it turned out to be. I’d say he spends a third of the story or so unconscious or otherwise tied up and doing not much of anything. 

The story centers around a plot by a nefarious mob boss to have his accountant killed while enroute to a court date. This information involving the trip was kept quite secret so it’s a mystery of who the leaker is and who to trust and who not to trust becomes paramount. Our central female Harris can’t go around investigating. She must parse clues from what she has and piece things together from what is said to her and what is said that others should not know about.

Flight Risk manages excitement and a few shocks while presenting a mystery where you the viewer must judge words and actions and not clues. It forces intuition over fact. We know who is not an issue but must figure out who is. All options are given plausibility though the info drop by Winston clears up the confusion. He does so like it was already discussed and not something pulled out of his, er, butt.

I thought that Hassan (Maaz Ali voice, Monib Abhat on-screen cameo), a charming pilot on the ground guiding Harris once she secures killer-in-disguise Wahlberg, was going to turn out to be a baddie guiding her into a trap. It would not be out of the realm of possibility for this type of thriller. Nice red herring. I can certainly see some people considering some of his dialogue creepy but humor can go a long way to relaxing someone during a tense situation which your pilot being a killer most certainly is.

The story is carried largely by the three people in the plane with the occasional assistive voice over the phone. Madolyn’s superior officer Caroline Van Sant (voice of Leah Remini) is supposed to have closeness with the our hero, but this is poorly communicated by just a voice. One-just ONE-scene in an office. How hard would it be to insert a flashback? There was also a need to see a moment with Winston outside of custody. You get through the movie but know little about our two central figures.

Done on the cheap and without much runtime, it doesn’t have anything that doesn’t help establish the central characters or stretch the movie out too much. I found myself never feeling bored. It’s not a piece of art, but it is fun escapist entertainment. Gibson has certainly directed better films, but this is not a film he should be ashamed of either.

Despite Mark Wahlberg’s hair and the questionable CGI, I was entertained by Flight Risk. It had a little bit of excitement while being an acceptable thriller.