★★☆☆☆
Flight Risk, the latest flick directed by Mel Gibson, is a short, isolated, and tense film about three characters stuck together on a fugitive escort flight over the Alaskan wilderness. Despite the interesting premise, the unrelatable cast and insubstantial plot left the film to nose-dive into boredom.
The movie opens with U.S. Marshall Madelyn Harris (Michelle Dockery) arresting a timid Winston (Topher Grace), an accountant hiding in remote Alaska. Winston carries valuable information about a crime boss named Moretti but demands protection to testify about him in New York. Harris arranges a small flight back to Anchorage with pilot Daryl Booth (Mark Wahlberg), and the three take off in a rickety plane where they will be confined for the rest of the movie.
After Harris and Booth engage in friendly conversation via their headsets, Winston notices a small slip of paper fall out of the pilot’s seat: Booth’s pilot’s license. Problematically, the face on the license is not the same person as the person piloting the aircraft. He attempts to communicate this to Harris who initially brushes him off, before eventually putting it together herself. Realizing his cover has been compromised, Booth’s psychotic imitator attacks Harris, kicking off the thriller aspect of the film.
This instance demonstrates a few solid aspects of the narrative: twists and dramatic irony. The movie frequently gives insight into the characters’ actions that go unseen by others, like the aforementioned pilot’s license, or how, once subdued, the hitman manages to pocket a knife. The use of the set is ingenious in this aspect. With three characters and two cockpit seats, the character in the back often avoids the gaze of whoever sits in the front.
Unfortunately, with the hitman subdued, no one qualified can fly the plane. Harris heroically attempts to pilot the aircraft but finds herself woefully unprepared to do so. So, she uses her satellite phone to contact her superiors Caroline Van Sant and Director Coleridge, who connect her to a pilot’s phone line which can assist her in operating the aircraft.
The cabin and its occupants waver under the rising pressure, but both manage to endure the physical and emotional turbulence. Shaky choreography puts the audience alongside the passengers, constantly bumping up and down, the anxiety supplemented by the whirring of radio static and rattling machinery.
Unfortunately, the movie lacks an external plot. Questions arise surrounding the hitman’s knowledge of Winson’s and Harris’ personal lives which leads to the deduction that there is a leak in the marshal’s office. The exposition of this plot does not hold weight, though, since it all occurs outside the cabin, with information being fed through conversations over the phone.
The film wants the audience to feel strongly about Moretti, Van Sant, and Coleridge. But without faces or notable personalities to grasp onto, there is an awkward lack of attachment.
Even the characters we do see are not easy to empathize with. Harris is a half-step away from the Mary Sue archetype, having no traits of interest aside from being constantly untrusting. Her character development is also pitifully uninspired.
Winston is arguably the best-acted and written character and is someone the audience can connect with as the film progresses. He actually has a personality and is realistically terrified about the alarming situation. Although he is sometimes used as comedic relief, he grounds the characters in reality.
The hitman is evil incarnate—he is completely psychotic and sadistic. He wants nothing more than to bring as much harm as possible to the other two. Though Wahlberg’s acting skill is evident in his performance, the character lacks depth and his role in the plot is one-dimensional.
The movie’s setting changes only at the beginning and at the end. For most of the hour-and-a-half runtime, the audience is placed in the plane with the three aforementioned characters, two of whom are impossible to relate to. The external plot is impalpable, and the direct threat of crashing fades before the movie hits the halfway point.
Thus, this so-called thriller falls victim to the cardinal sin of the genre: being predictable and boring.
In certain aspects, the film thrives—the mystery aspects of the picture are executed well. Regrettably, the narrative cannot capitalize upon this, unfortunately lacking the necessary skeleton of a good movie. Flight Risk fails to create a layered situation worth investing in, and as a result, it is unable to stick the landing.
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