Y’all want a pilot? It’s time for Mark Wahlberg and Mel Gibson to proceed their string of collaborations. These two beforehand co-starred within the two Daddy’s Dwelling motion pictures and the 2022 biographical drama Father Stu, and now, Gibson steps behind the digital camera to direct Wahlberg in Flight Risk. This motion thriller options Michelle Dockery as Madelyn Harris, a Deputy U.S. Marshal who should switch a witness named Winston (Topher Grace) to trial. However when the pilot, performed by Wahlberg, reveals himself to be a hitman, she should get Winston to security.
Flight Danger is enjoyable at occasions however in the end finally ends up as a mediocre try at a popcorn film. It’s fascinating that Gibson returned to the director’s chair for this movie. Most of his different directorial efforts (Braveheart, The Ardour of the Christ, Apocalypto, Hacksaw Ridge) had been extra grandiose, incomes Oscar nominations. This film positive gained’t be getting any awards, neither is it attempting to. Gibson’s strategy to this film is simple enjoyable. He’s aiming to make a blockbuster, adapting author Jared Rosenberg’s script right into a one-location motion thriller.
Whereas many will consider a film like Non-Cease to check this airplane motion movie with, Flight Danger additionally comprises similarities to the 2020 Joseph Gordon-Levitt thriller 7500 and final 12 months’s criminally underrated South Korean movie Hijack 1971. However this film doesn’t work in addition to others on this style. The premise of two characters trapped on a aircraft with a hitman is gripping on paper. They’re trapped in a shifting car, neither of them know how one can fly a aircraft, and the one one who can fly it’s a murderous lunatic hell-bent on killing them each. Whereas components of this movie provide the thrill you’d anticipate, it’s a surprisingly inconsistent movie.
The primary act of Flight Danger is ok. Topher Grace has at all times been a pleasant presence in motion pictures and TV, and he does some Eric Forman ranges of sarcasm as Winston. He’s fed up with Madelyn early on and she or he’s not precisely a fan of his both. Quickly sufficient, Marky Mark arrives on the aircraft, changing his signature Boston accent with a thick Southern drawl. There’s some fantastic stress right here as Winston discovers that this pilot will not be who he says he’s and tries desperately to get Madelyn on the identical web page as him.
After the pilot reveals himself as a hitman, he’s rapidly subdued. Right here we now have the primary challenge with the movie: the nice guys are successful for a lot an excessive amount of of the story. Though Wahlberg is the face of all of the advertising, he spends a lot of the movie handcuffed within the background. A great level of reference for why this film doesn’t work very properly is the 1994 film Velocity. That’s one other movie that has our characters trapped in a shifting car. However the villain in that film is at all times successful, and the nice guys are at all times at risk. Right here, the villain is sitting down, tormenting them verbally however bodily unable to place them in any hazard.
It’s nonetheless good to see Wahlberg as a nasty man. He hasn’t had loads of villainous roles since his 1996 film Concern, usually taking part in the hero in his motion roles like The Household Plan, Uncharted, and Infinite (which I don’t suppose is as dangerous as folks say, by the best way). He will get to play essentially the most mustache-twirling villain ever right here, and he’s not dangerous. His character hurts and kills as a result of he has enjoyable doing it, similar to it appears as if Wahlberg is having a blast on this position. His character isn’t very attention-grabbing as a result of he’s essentially the most one-dimensional evil man ever, however Wahlberg is de facto swinging for the fences right here.
However let’s return to Velocity—that film works so properly as a result of whereas they’re driving that bus, they’re consistently going through obstacles, from site visitors to schoolchildren to a child carriage stuffed with cans. Flight Danger works every time it does that, however there are moments the place the momentum vanishes and the hazard subsides. Madelyn doesn’t know how one can fly a aircraft at first, however she will get the hold of it too rapidly, and the screenplay doesn’t reap the benefits of her incapacity.
It might typically really feel like Flight Danger is a dumb film attempting to disguise itself as a sensible one. Whereas that is your easy actioner, there are some questionable writing selections. For instance, the hitman pulls a knife on the heroes early on. By some means, each Madelyn and Winston utterly overlook in regards to the knife, whereas I used to be mentally screaming at them each to search out it and cease it from getting again into the hitman’s fingers. There’s additionally a really contrived plot level that requires Madelyn to placed on an article of clothes for no motive after which someway not discover that it goes lacking. It’s an thought needed to extend the stakes within the later half of the movie, however Madelyn’s ignorance of all the things merely made me really feel like she was horrible at her job.
General, Flight Danger by no means absolutely takes off. There’s a subplot surrounding occasions occurring on the bottom, however the movie solely has us hear these occasions relatively than see it in order that we are able to keep within the claustrophobic aircraft. It may be difficult to attach with these different occasions and characters consequently. This film had potential, however it will get held again by loads of ineffective humor, makes an attempt at crowd-pleasing moments that don’t please crowds and Wahlberg being incapacitated for almost all of the runtime, repeating some variation of, “I’m gonna damage you, and I’ll take pleasure in it!”
SCORE: 5/10
As ComingSoon’s review policy explains, a rating of 5 equates to “Mediocre.” The positives and negatives wind up negating one another, making it a wash.
Disclosure: ComingSoon attended a press screening for our Flight Danger evaluation.
