Flight Risk! The film we knew as Mel Gibson’s newest and “the one where Mark Wahlberg is in a bald cap, for some reason” has finally arrived. Has it lived up to the specific Gibson hype (aka being absolutely fucking insane)? Kinda!
If you are like me, a reluctant, and probably disturbed, fan of Gibson’s directorial outings, there are certain things you come to expect with his films; namely, that they would be completely unhinged and shockingly violent. Hacksaw Ridge was hokey and ultra violent, like if the entirety of Forrest Gump was just blood soaked Vietnam battles; Apocalypto is a 2 hour long chase film where we watch the Aztec people sacrifice prisoners in a city that looks like it was built by the TCM Sawyer family; and Passion Of The Christ is like if the Cenobites were tasked with making a pornography.
To that, Flight Risk is actually pretty tame. No human sacrificing, no extended battle gore, and no flaying whips. Instead, what we get is a pretty boilerplate one location thriller; U.S. Marshall Madolyn (Michelle Dockery) is tasked with transporting a former mob accountant (Topher Grace) from Alaska back to New York to take the witness stand against his former employers. After takeoff, Madolyn quickly realizes that their pilot (Mark Wahlberg) isn’t who he seems. Things quickly spiral up in the air, and Madolyn finds herself flying a plane she doesn’t know how to fly, with a madman tied up in the back, and no idea who she can trust, especially her boss and best friend, Van Sant (Leah Remini, if you can believe it).
It’s pretty basic DTV thriller stuff, admittedly. But, where the true insanity lies, where the cobwebs and broken glass that make up Gibson’s mind come out, is in Mark Wahlberg’s character. Beyond the ludicrous wig and bald cap, which, to be honest, never stops being distracting, Wahlberg plays hitman Daryl as a psychopath of the…problematic sort. See, Daryl isn’t here to threaten his captors with death, or really even bloody torture. Nope, Daryl is here to threaten one thing and one thing only; rape. Every threat that comes out of his mouth is of the sexually violent variety, and boy does he have a fixation of Topher Grace, who is the focus of most of his sleazy taunts.
Now, basic plotline, ugly cinematography and sexually violent antagonist. This should be a total strike out, right? Well…It still kinda works. Admittedly, it’s the worst of Gibson’s films, and is genuinely ugly as hell (there is some CGI in the first 10 minutes that is car-crash-in-Along-Came-A-Spider bad), but it still works as a contained, super mean-spirited little thriller. The stakes are continuously risen, the antagonist is genuinely frightening, we are consistently introduced to twists that keep the story moving at a clip, and, with its tight run time, you never really start to tire of the one location. On a structural and thematic level, it works.
Now, the elephant in the room; the politics. Gibson is known to be, both in his films and in his personal life, kind of a “spirited type” (read; foaming at the mouth dickhead). But, those politics don’t really come into play here. The world of Flight Risk is pretty black and white; Madolyn is a strong, principled character who is adamant about keeping the people in her care alive, while Daryl is a total and complete menace that you are genuinely afraid of escaping. The lines between good and evil are very specific, and not at all controversial. The closest argument I can see is that you could consider Wahlberg as an “evil gay” stereotype, but even then he’s an equal opportunity rapist. (All this being said; I would not be surprised to find out Gibson based Wahlberg’s insane hairstyle on some total random political figure to make a statement, like the head of the EPA or something).
As a quick aside, I’m kinda shocked that Wahlberg agreed to this role. The last half decade or so he’s been heavily focused on what appears to be an image rehab, focusing on prioritizing his faith in the roles he takes, and transforming his public persona into something more family friendly. Taking an absolutely wild role like this, that essentially asks him to be as lewd and violent as humanly possible, is not at all what I was expecting, but, also might be a really interesting bellwether to where his career is going next? Wahlberg is an actor who, with the right director and role, can be an amazing actor, and seeing him take a turn down lunacy street is both strange but kind of exciting.
One of the classic lines you hear nowadays about these types of mid-budget affairs is “we used to get a dozen of these a year at the multiplex”. That’s not Flight Risk. That is very much Den of Thieves 2 or The Beekeeper or The Equalizer films. Flight Risk is something far less reputable. It is something you’d find at the video store, that you never heard of, but you thought looked pretty interesting because it had a cool looking stunt on the cover (that probably wasn’t actually in the movie). You’d end up walking away entertained enough, if not a bit skeeved out, and it would forever live in your memory as “you guys ever see that movie where that A lister slummed it in a very lewd but interesting way?”
Also, might be an early contender for 4k release of the year, cause, holy shit, look at that slip cover.
