Tag: Mel

It’s weird to find an animal outside of its natural habitat. A penguin floating around the International Space Station instead of waddling through the Antarctic. A kangaroo in line at the Department of Motor Vehicles instead of hopping across the Outback. A skunk in the White House instead of… actually, no, that one fits. Anyway, it’s also weird to find a mediocre straight-to-DVD action movie inside of a major movie theater, instead of in the bargain bin at a Big Lots in 2010.

All of that is to say that “Flight Risk” is a bit of a novelty. It’s a sometimes competent, mostly not, low-concept aerial thriller about a U.S. Marshal escorting a mob witness in a tiny chartered plane over the wilds of Alaska. A few minutes into the flight they figure out the pilot is actually an assassin with an embarrassing haircut. For the rest of the movie they figure out how to get that plane on the ground safely, how to keep the bad guy incapacitated (which they’re really bad at) and how much of the off-camera plot they can yammer about before the credits roll.

There was a time when stories about regular people — or at least people who weren’t pilots — who had to land a plane all by themselves was blockbuster material. The parody movie “Airplane!” pretty much killed that, but for decades the cliché lived on in high stakes episodes of primetime action-adventure shows, sweeps week on daytime soap operas and straight-to-video junky thrillers. “Flight Risk” has nothing new to add to this formula. Even getting trapped on an airplane with a homicidal maniac was done better, and much earlier, in the Ray Liotta/Lauren Holly vehicle (ha!) “Turbulence.” The plane in “Flight Risk” just happens to be smaller.

With ingenuity off the table, “Flight Risk” goes all the way back to basics. A simple plot, with simple thrills and, unfortunately, some very simple characters. Michelle Dockery (“Boy Kills World”) plays Madelyn Harris, a Deputy U.S. Marshal with a tragic past, who’s finally back in the field after years of penance behind a desk. Topher Grace (“Heretic”) is Winston, a spineless mafia accountant who can’t be trusted. Mark Wahlberg is the assassin, and I haven’t seen his contract but he seems to have waived his usual fee in exchange for permission to ham it up without mercy.

You see, the plot of “Flight Risk” doesn’t make any sense if the killer just wants Winston and Madelyn dead. The movie would be over in 10 minutes. So instead, Wahlberg is a raving lunatic. His character even claims to work pro bono, just so he can torture and sexually assault and murder people, but I’m pretty sure there are lots of serial killers and mass murderers throughout history who didn’t have to ask the mob for permission. If you’re just evil for evil’s sake, why go out of your way to get a bureaucracy involved, even a criminal one? Besides, even the least organized of the organized crime rings would probably hire someone vaguely reliable instead of this unpredictable weirdo.

Wahlberg’s character, who goes by the fake name “Daryl Booth,” spends a lot of “Flight Risk” tied up in the back of the plane. A third of the time he’s unconscious, a third of the time he’s yelling about sex crimes and another third of the time he’s wreaking havoc with “Flight Risk’s” continuity, moving around when he’s supposed to be incapacitated or mugging hilariously like the lipstick ghost from “Insidious” making silly faces in the closing minutes of a “Saturday Night Live” episode.

There are moments of humor and tension that arise, because even as ramshackle a script as this one can’t make Grace bad at comic timing, or make a simple threat like crashing an airplane completely dull. The director — who according to the film’s marketing is some nameless filmmaker who directed “Braveheart” and “Apocalypto” — sometimes keeps all the plates spinning at the same time. But then sometimes this guy, hang on let me look him up… “Mel Gibson?” Really? That sounds like a made-up name. Anyway, half the time he whiffs it.

There are times when “Flight Risk” fails at basic cinematic competency. In fact, there are several times in the film’s opening scene. Continuity errors are one thing — one very distracting and amateurish thing — but this movie opens with an establishing shot of a motel that’s somehow completely unconvincing. It looks about as real as an AI-generated photo. Then, while Grace stares into a microwave at his warming cup of noodles (which may be preferable to watching “Flight Risk”) we also get a shot of a CGI moose that wouldn’t pass muster in a beer commercial 20 years ago.

When “Flight Risk” works, it works because Topher Grace can play a weasel like nobody’s business (actually, wait, this is literally Topher Grace’s business). It also works because someone had the brilliant idea to make the air traffic controller talking them through this calamity into a flirtatious dork. His name is Hassan, he’s played by Monib Abhat, and I would rather watch a cheerful romantic comedy about him and Madelyn making goo-goo eyes at each other than a generic nosedive like this.

“Flight Risk” is now playing in theaters.

The post ‘Flight Risk’ Review: Mark Wahlberg Hams It Up in Mel Gibson’s Basic Airplane Thriller appeared first on TheWrap.