I’m sort of torn on my thoughts about ‘Flight Risk’. On one hand its a decent enough fun ninety minute thriller which has a super simple plot and premise.  A Federal Marshall escorts a key witness to attend a court appearance by grabbing a lift with a private plane. The core cast consists of the witness, the federal agent and the pilot. Its the sort of film that were ten a penny back in the 90’s in my video store and I loved watching films like this. Simple entertaining plots that were played out as good as they needed to be to get to the end of the story. However with Flight Risk, this is a Mel Gibson directed film, the director of Hacksaw Ridge, Braveheart, The Passion Of The Christ, Apocalypto and Man Without A Face. The first four of those films are epic cinema and Mel even won Best Director at the 1996 Academy Awards. Mel knows how to direct epic cinema. 

But Flight Risk isn’t epic cinema, its a taught little thriller that has nothing remotely in it that screams ‘Directed by Mel Gibson’ but is that fair to punish the film for that. I say no.

For what it is, I enjoyed Flight Risk. It does have ‘go straight to streaming’ written all over it but fair play to the people behind the film- they tried its luck in theatres and to be fair it did make $44m which is above its $25m budget and once you add on some streaming rights down the line, some video on demand money and some physical media money- I dare say the film will make a little profit or at least not lose money.

The cast are fine, lead actress Michelle Dockery as Madolyn is on great form and Mark Wahlberg is chewing up the scenery in this one (and his hair style is…well lets just say you cant take your eyes of it and it does look odd)  The story itself and the film itself does lack any tension- you know that the story has two outcomes. 1- the plane crashes into ground and everyone dies, or 2- the plane lands and people survive. Now if the film went for option 1 you wouldn’t have a film or you wouldn’t have a feature film,so your brain kinda of knows that the plot is headed for option 2. Therefor there is no ‘oh what will happen- will they make it’ feeling when watching the film but that’s a nitpick I guess.

So if you have 90 minutes spare and want to turn off your brain and just be somewhat entertained then Flight Risk might be the film for you. Its not going to end up anywhere near my Favourite Films of the Year list but its not going to be end up in ‘films I really didn’t like’ list either. Its a fun enough film that did what it needed to. It entertained me for an hour and a half.