'FLIGHT RISK'......UP IN AIR, MEL HATH NO FURY LIKE A PSYCHO WAHLBERG......

 Flight Risk (2025)

     We've shown little or no interest in the doings of Mel Gibson ever since he ripped away his genial Movie Star mask to reveal himself as a drunken anti semite and all around obnoxious guy. 

       Having said that, we'll still try to honestly approach this film with even handed fairness.......

      Honestly, it's a dumb little stinker of an action-suspense movie, a stripped down, low budget imitation of those 90's high concept, high octane thrillers that usually starred Stallone, or Willis, or Ford, or Schwarzenegger.

        In this brief, gimmicky contraption, a conflicted, previously disgraced U.S. Marshall (Michele Dockery) has, in the wilds of Alaska, nailed her quarry, a snarky, wisecracking mob accountant (Topher Grace). The squirmy wormy numbers cruncher agrees to testify against his boss, which requires the Marshall to escort him on a small rickety plane to Anchorage so they can hop an airliner to Seattle.  

        As fate (and the script) decrees, the little plane's goofy, grinnin' pilot (Mark Walhberg) is actually a sadistic mob hitman, sent to wipe out Grace, but not on Dockery's watch. 

           Then the bulk of the film's 90 minutes is taken up with Dockery and Grace's brutal, back and forth battles with Wahlberg for control of the plane and to see who makes it out of this movie alive......

           To extract any entertainment out of this film, you'll need to dial down your intelligence level (like the robots in "Companion") to somewhere around a 1 or a 2.  That way, you won't continually roll your eyes at the sight of a bald Wahlberg or the annoying off screen voice of the pilot trying to teach Dockery to land the plane.....(while attempting to flirt with her enough to win a date.....honest.)

            One positive note......Mel Gibson may indeed be a flawed, flailing mess of a human being, but he does know how to edit and stage convincing action sequences. But that skill alone will never return him to his long lost A-List status......especially if it's put to use in a such a stale cheap crackerjack box of a movie like this one.

            1 star (*). Action lovers, wait till it wanders into some streaming site that's either free or one you're paying for already. Otherwise, feel free to skip it. You won't have missed a thing.