Flight Risk (2025) Review: Mel Gibson’s First Directorial Effort in Nine Years is a Bumpy Ride of an Airplane Thriller

Flight Risk marks the return of Mel Gibson calling the shots as a director, his first since Hacksaw Ridge nine years ago. And yet, instead of feeling it’s going to be a movie worth looking forward to judging by Gibson’s past directorial prowess alone seen in Braveheart, Apocalypto and the aforementioned 2016 war drama, I still can’t help but feel this is uncharacteristically odd to see his name here.

A movie like Flight Risk feels right up in say, Jaume Collet-Serra’s or Renny Harlin’s wheelhouse. It makes me think this movie is more of a work-for-hire than something visionary or ambitious from someone like Mel Gibson. Perhaps he’s been falling out of favour for too long since his acting career already suffered a continuous slump with a string of forgettable B-movies. It’s not like Gibson in his autopilot mode here as Flight Risk does get off to a promising start for the first 30 minutes or so.

Some shoddy special effects aside including a CGI moose seen in the opening scene, Gibson, working from Jared Rosenberg’s debut screenplay, doesn’t waste time getting his movie up to speed: A deputy U.S. marshal Madolyn (Michelle Dockery) and two officers manage to track down the runaway mob accountant Winston (Topher Grace), who is laying low in a motel somewhere in Alaska. She needs him to testify against the mob in court but before that, the two need to board a small plane heading to Seattle.

The pilot in charge of the flight is a talkative guy named Daryl (Mark Wahlberg) who wears his baseball cap backwards. Winston, in the meantime, is chained and cuffed to a chair at the back. Everything looks fine and on schedule at first with the plane eventually taking off from the runway. A few small talks between Madolyn and Daryl later, it isn’t long before Winston discovers something on the floor that surprises him and particularly demands Madolyn’s attention.

Soon, Daryl’s cover is blown after he turns out to be a hitman working for the mob in charge of getting rid of Winston. An ensuing scuffle follows but Madolyn finally manages to knock him down before restraining the unconscious Daryl at the back of the plane. So far, so good as Gibson manages to keep the pace brisk and economical, even though the distracting CGI background can be a turn-off.

Okay, so Daryl is subdued and what’s next? Who’s going to fly the plane? Neither Madolyn nor Winston know how to do it and it’s ultimately up to the former to try and take control of the plane. Since she is inexperienced and has to rely on someone else through radio communication, a pilot named Hassan (voiced by Maaz Ali) tries his best in every way he can to guide her on how to fly the plane.

For someone like Madolyn who doesn’t have a clue about flying a plane, she gets the hang of it pretty fast as if she’s learning how to ride a bicycle. I was hoping Gibson wouldn’t resort to such a narrative shortcut, which in turn, botches the opportunity to stage suspenseful moments of Madolyn struggling to control the plane. It doesn’t help either when the movie tries to lighten up a little with Hassan still has time to flirt with her, which feels awkwardly misplaced.

The movie also attempts to throw in some red herrings as Madolyn tries to find out the mole who leaks the information and so on. And after a while, it starts running out of gas — as in the movie, not the plane — with a series of increasingly mundane moments. Perhaps the biggest problem lies in the high-stakes scenario peaks too early with Daryl sitting on the back, all handcuffed and motionless. He does awake at one point and a similar situation repeats.

But the action still suffers from the stop-start momentum, making me wonder whether Gibson is clueless in sustaining the tension and suspense that could have rendered a sense of claustrophobic dread within the confines of a small plane. As for the cast, Dockery looks the part playing a tough and no-nonsense deputy U.S. marshal Madolyn while Grace is ideally typecast as the nervous mob accountant Winston.

Wahlberg, who sports a rather odd-looking male pattern baldness, even though he is reportedly gone all method by actually shaving his head, had a field day playing an unhinged character since Fear back in 1996. Too bad the clunky and sometimes cheesy dialogue along with the erratic pace, particularly in the sluggish midsection and dodgy special effects often preventing Flight Risk from reaching its full potential.