'Flight Risk' briefing

2 ½ (out of 4)

            So back when his reputation was lowest, after raving about Jews during his DUI arrest nearly twenty years ago, critics and filmmakers still couldn't help calling Mel Gibson’s brutal late-Mayan survival epic Apocalypto a bold, masterful achievement. Decades later I may still find myself peeking through my fingers for that 2006 sucker punch more than just about any horror movie I’ve ever seen, its got that all-encompassing brutality and bravado allowing the carnage, thrills and scenic splendor all align like a gosh dang solar eclipse, enough to insist on separating art from the  alcoholic.

I’m surprised Mel’s responsible for something as modest as Flight Risk this late in life, since this marks only his sixth directed feature in over 30 years. Including his mighty melodramatic debut The Man Without a Face, he’s never NOT gone hard, particularly in his quick follow-up two years later in Braveheart’s Oscar-clinching sorta-Scottish war epic ego-explosion (about as shameless as Kevin Costner’s Dances With Wolves) — apart from Apocalypto that just leaves 2004’s The Passion of the Christ and 2016’s Hacksaw Ridge, showcasing Christ figures literal and oh so plainly figurative and both pretty fascinating true stories. I suppose Flight Risk pays the bills while he funds The Resurrection of the Christ, the holiest sequel since Matrix 3. Despite some abysmal critical responses to this headstone in the typical January cine-cemetery, I must be quite contrary — I feel safe from damnation saying it’s more worthwhile than his Jesus movie — for aiming low Flight Risk isn’t automatically his worst ever.

It’s a pressurized thriller that’s in ’n’ out in 90 minutes flat, exhibiting exceptional performance work from its three equally dynamic leads, despite Markie Mark singlehandedly selling the thing while acting kookier (more loathsome than badass) than probably five of his solo Jason Statham-flavor heroics combined. Actually, outside of Boogie Nights and The Departed, I’m struggling to name any others noteworthy turns aside from All the Money in the World and The Other Guys… how can one keep up with the bad family comedies, bad adult comedies and Transformers flicks on top of his regular mid-budget action movie mode? Topher Grace never really got another big break since Eddie Brock, and here its so nice to see what might've been a third wheel role become a chance for the guy actually act in between stretches set aside for his naturally funny self. But really its Michelle Dockery of Downton Abbey renown (who even appeared in the planeslop of yesteryear, Liam Neeson’s cruddy Non-Stop from 2014) as the tested US Deputy Marshall yanking the spotlight away from Whalberg to command the film with conviction as she unravels a conspiracy through phone calls like this is Locke for the skies and Tom Hardy was unavailable.

What I mildly cherish about Flight Risk is bringing back plane movies, bottle movies (less My Dinner with Andre and more Assault on Precinct 13, as it's usually horror thrillers coasting on one-location claustrophobia such as Phone Booth, Devil, Buried or 10 Cloverfield Lane) but most importantly PLANE BOTTLE MOVIES — the screenplay (first-timer Jared Rosenberg) has to put in overtime and Gibson’s more than minor entry will go down in the microgenre’s brief history, hovering above Snakes on a Plane and Flightplan, if just below Wes Craven’s Red Eye and Wolfgang Petersen’s Air Force One — Simon West’s Con Air is simply in another league.

You could reject it as seasonal trash — for early year surprises Companion is far more fulfilling but Flight Risk is a definitive “don’t let the critics deceive” kinda moment. For all its B-movie mishaps — like laughable CG mooses (meese?) before the quickly imperceptible mid-air green-screening —  Flight Risk could carry you through a matinee or a short layover, it basically feeds you a constant, convenient countdown. You could ask questions like, “Why didn’t they just shoot this psycho-murderer forever ago?” But I’ll take watchable characters and irresistible drama even if you occasionally gotta drop logic like ballast.