Title – Flight Risk (2025)

Director – Mel Gibson (Hacksaw Ridge)

Cast – Mark Wahlberg, Michelle Dockery, Topher Grace

Plot – Determined Marshall Madolyn (Dockery) finds her seemingly simply air transport of key witness/criminal Winston (Grace) anything but when their flights pilot Daryl (Wahlberg) shows his true colours, setting in motion a dangerous game of cat and mouse.

“Y’all need a pilot?”

Review by Eddie on 28/04/2025

One of the most ill-advised, pointless and just plain odd films you’re likely to see in 2025, it’s almost entirely incomprehensible that Flight Risk is in fact made by the same Mel Gibson that once upon a time (as this films poster tell us) directed Braveheart, Apocalypto and Hacksaw Ridge.

We all know and understand that Gibson has from his own undoing ruined much of his reputation and credibility from poor personal life choices and odd behaviours but none of that excuses the talented and experienced filmmaker from wasting his time and effort (and that of his cast, crew and viewers) with whatever Flight Risk is supposed to be.

His first project with his fellow anti-Hollywood and Christian brother Mark Wahlberg, who here delivers what could well be his worst big screen performance yet as sex-fiend hitman/pilot Daryl, Gibson and his new creative muse combine forces to gift us a stale and charisma free action thriller set almost entirely in the confines of a small plane that houses Michelle Dockery’s dogged Marshall Madolyn, her criminal package in the form of Topher Grace’s Winston and Wahlberg’s detestable menace.

It’s the type of flight you will be willing to launch out of (perhaps even minus a parachute!) as Gibson fails to ignite any spark creatively on a tale that shows its hand far too early and then struggles to maintain any momentum as Dockery, Grace and Wahlberg collectively flounder in the water that left them without a life jacket courtesy of Gibson’s flabby direction and screenwriter Jared Rosenberg’s laughably poor script.

The whole concept potentially gives way to a really fun B-movie experience but there’s nothing here that makes one suspect Flight Risk will eventually become that film and it’s most certainly not a so bad its good experience with the films runtime of 90 minutes feeling far too long when any hope of salvation is lost amongst the Alaskan wilderness in the early stages of this DOA offering.

Everyone involved in Flight Risk should know better and could do better, there’s a time and place for the type of film Gibson maybe envisioned in his brain in the early stages of its development but this poorly executed, amateurishly designed and ill-advised feature is offensively bad and at times just offensive in the way it goes about thing coming off as a rude and crude excuse of a film that makes any future collaboration opportunities between Wahlberg and Gibson a very scary proposition.

Final Say –

A career low point for many involved, none more so than Academy Award winning director Mel Gibson, Flight Risk is a dire thriller that is a flight you’d be better off not checking into.

1/2 a de-gloving out of 5