Flight Risk

Bluesky

A lawman, a fugitive, and a perilous journey. It's a straightforward premise and moving it north to Alaska and up into an aircraft doesn't stop it from being akin to a Western. The mob loom as large as any mountain and there's nowhere to hide. Not even in the clouds.

Those hazards aside, there's also very little to look out for. That the single location is a bush plane means the small cast get to cover some distance, but even within that there are some odd choices. A reassuring voice over the radio is not the same one that appears on the runway, but that's the least of the technical issues.

Boarding the plane looks like a cut-scene from a videogame, potentially an early CD-ROM title or one of those Full Motion Video (FMV) efforts with sprites unconvincingly moving across a photorealistic background. There's a Shutterstock licencing statement and I do genuinely wonder if the runway was a static element. There's plenty of other things that feel like they're going nowhere so it'd be in good company.

The aircraft in question is a Cessna 208B Grand Caravan, a big name for a small plane. As I'm the kind of person who counts rivets I noted a shot that was clearly reversed because the ID N208UU appeared with an initial UU before a potential detour to the Cyrillic. Russia's not that much further over the horizon from the largest state of the Union, which is why it's full of United States Air Force and Air National Guard units, including some that fly the F-22 Raptor. That makes the appearance of an F-18 at one point all the more surprising, as the most likely operator in that region isn't the Navy or Marine Corps but Canada. Except I can tell from the distinctive air intakes that it's a Super Hornet, which the RCAF don't fly. Wondering if I was meant to infer an off-screen wingman with a missile lock was a more challenging puzzle than any part of the plot. Whether their ability to use it wasn't compromised by being part of the small Alaskan flying community was independent of wherever else they were stationed. It was also an attempt to find a way to follow Flight Risk without glancing off its glaring issues.

I did spend a while trying to figure out if the angle of the sun was right given the ostensible heading of the aircraft and again realised that casual mathematics and a bit of geographic guessing was more fun than the film had given me itself. I can't guarantee the routes that were taken. I'm not sure the last runway was one of the two at Ted Stevens International. I knew even before watching this film that there are very good reasons why emergency protocols don't include parking equipment at the end of the runway nor haring along after aircraft but if you want some go fast and flashing lights these are secondary considerations.

The marketing for the film did a lot to hide that Mel Gibson is directing, and of his credits in that role I'll bluntly state that Flight Risk is by far the worst. Braveheart might have been nonsense and The Passion Of The Christ harrowing but they had ambition. Though it takes liberties with lunar mechanics the last scene of Apocalypto is in a way world ending, and with revelatory power from it.

This has got a comedy microwave. I saw this because my schedule randomly allowed, which meant I didn't have my usual notebook. Instead I scribbled thoughts on the back of a receipt which might be more effort than went into the script. All the beats one would expect are here, with the situation in the cramped cabin evolving in ways that'd be predictable even if they weren't in the trailer. Those parts that aren't are usually made glaringly evident. In what persists as a locked-room three-hander there's little that we're not given a good handle on, whether it's in plain sight or bright red or both.

The biggest surprise for me was the use of New Order's Blue Monday. That may be because I've seen Mark Wahlberg go through some significant physical transformations for roles before. Balding is nothing compared to his turn in Father Stu, another work of his with Gibson. Michelle Dockery may be trying to put distance between her years as Lady Mary in Downton Abbey and now, but Flight Risk is a doomed escape. Topher Grace has similarly struggled to get from small to big screen but anyone expecting something as toothsome as his turn in Predators will find themselves stuck.

A debut for writer Jared Rosenberg, its one saving grace is its run-time. If that seems faint praise, be assured that even at a scheduling friendly 90ish minutes it more than outstays its welcome. Attempts to have cake and eat it with a mixture of radio silence and satellite phones make everything feel indecisive. Anything that passes for suspense is undone and often because Wahlberg's villain chews on it. As a whole it feels like a mid-season episode of one of the interminable slew of acronym-based law enforcement shows, one that attempts to move on the season's plot with a limited budget and a guest star who owes someone a favour. The production templates don't work quite the same way any more but you could suggest it's a B-movie if only because nobody A-list would return phone calls.

What jokes it has fall short, I think in part because everything else is so laughable. If it's meant to be a comedy, nobody told the marketing department, and I think the cast and crew might not have received the memo either. If it's meant to be a thriller then it uses any suspended disbelief to keep what one suspects is a scrapped fuselage shoogling on a soundstage. The trio on the trip are there because they're under arrest, under orders, and under few illusions about what opportunities they've got to practise their craft. Some of that applies offscreen as well. There's no equivalent compulsion upon audiences, and plenty of other options. Though it's probably a goose that's responsible for the bird-strike jump-scare, it's critical and not ornithological knowledge that leads me to suggest Flight Risk is one to duck.