Flight Risk suffers fatal flaw that tragically ruins any potential

Flight Risk, the latest film from actor and director Mel Gibson, is quite frankly a complete crash-and-burn.

Released on January 24, Flight Risk is an action thriller starring Mark Wahlberg, Michelle Dockery and Topher Grace.

The film follows a US flight marshal (Dockery) who boards a small plane to accompany a fugitive informant (Grace) to trial, but things go awry when the pilot (Wahlberg) isn’t quite the man he says he is.

With a controversial director and an unoriginal premise, expectations were already low for this thriller. And low and behold, I was disappointed.

The film’s fatal flaw is simple; it has no idea what it is.

Sold as an action thriller in the trailer, the movie promises high-octane drama but is completely undercut by cheap, embarrassingly unfunny jokes that kill any tension.

Wahlberg’s prosthetic bald head being uncovered after his identity as the villain of the story is revealed, was one of the cheap gags thrown into the film after a spate of prison rape jokes.

The silence from the audience spoke volumes as the ‘jokes’ fell completely flat and viewers seemed to be confused by failed attempts to veer into the action-comedy realm.

As the trailer shows, Madelyn is forced to fly the plane at one point and is guided through her headset by a trained pilot named Hassan.

This high-pressure scenario is completely bizarre as Hassan flirts and jokes – while teaching a complete learner how to fly an aircraft.

It’s as cringeworthy as it is baffling and completely takes viewers out of the drama of the scene.

Flight Risk is almost entirely set within the plane in a bottle-episode style a la The Breakfast Club or 127 Hours.

The limited space is an acting challenge many relish but unfortunately for this tepid script, the acting talent is completely wasted as the two-dimensional characters follow typical archetypes and plod through the script at a dull pace.

It’s riddled with plot holes and unnecessary narrative points that hinge on flimsy ‘evidence’.

When Wahlberg’s villainous character starts leaking key information – as all good baddies do – Madelyn immediately decides to wrongly throw her mentor of several years under the bus by assuming she is the mole.

Because why would you need concrete evidence to make that decision?

Winston also learns that the bodies know where his mother lives. Something that apparently is a huge concern for him, but didn’t occur to him that she’d be at risk after stealing from the big baddie ‘Moretti’ for years.

The film picks up in the second half, but unfortunately, by that point, you’d have likely switched it off if left to your own devices.

There is one saving grace to Flight Risk, however; the acting.

Dockery might not have been the actor you’d imagine in this role, but even her character had believable moments – among all the rough terrain of the rubbish script.

Grace and Wahlberg also had their moments as the dialogue-heavy film gave them infrequent but occasional moments to fall into the character archetypes they do best.

Sadly, even the talented cast couldn’t save this awful film which debuts in cinemas on January 24.

Flight Risk is in cinemas now.

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