Flight Risk (2025)
I only wanted to see Flight Risk because of Mark Wahlberg’s awful-looking bald cap, and in an ideal world things can only get better from there, right?
Heh. We don’t live in an ideal world. Well, most of the time we don’t, anyway.
Flight Risk opens at a cabin in Alaska, where Winston is heating up some Cup Noodles in the microwave. Long story short, the Feds bust in on him, his ramen explodes, and he’s taken into custody so he can testify against the Morettis, a vicious mobster family. He was their accountant, and the Air Marshal, Madolyn, considers him a flight risk. She won’t even let him use the toilet by himself.
The next thing Winston knows, he’s chained to a seat on a dumpy Cessna that looks like it’s held together with duct tape, and he and Madolyn are on their way to Anchorage. The pilot is Daryl, who’s folksy to a fault, chomping gum and waxing lyrical about his hula-dancing grizzly on the dashboard. He’s done the flight to Anchorage so many times he can fly it blindfolded.
Winston is frustrated and uncomfortable with the seating arrangement until he catches sight of what should be Daryl’s driver’s license, and is horrified when he sees Daryl isn’t who he says he is. After that, things get terrifying. Madolyn ends up having to fly the plane, and it doesn’t help that Fake Daryl is like the proverbial bad penny. Tying him up in the back of the plane doesn’t keep him from trying to murder Madolyn and Winston.
Flight Risk seems like a giant troll at first. Topher Grace brings his usual dry humor to the proceedings, and things start out downright funny. “I’d rather be on Spirit Airlines,” he says when installed in the seat on the dumpy Cessna.
The humor is part of what makes Flight Risk quite the ride. It also keeps things from getting too morose, because Fake Daryl is quite the head case. Madolyn has to smack him around in various ways, and even then it takes what we could call an act of God to get rid of him. No, I’m not going to spoil anything. Trust me, it’s better this way.
Oh, and Mark Wahlberg’s bald cap isn’t a bald cap. He actually had part of his head shaved for the movie.
Now, the movie does sputter a little bit in the third act, because as the stakes seem to get higher the cred gets a wee bit strained. Flirtations with death spirals. hand-to-hand combat at three thousand feet (yes, this Cessna often flies uncomfortably low), mountains that appear out of nowhere, and oh yeah, the fact that Madolyn will have to eventually land the plane with no experience or fuel.
So yeah, Flight Risk could have been better, but it was still way better than I thought it would be. I’m glad there was more to it than what I thought was a bad bald cap.
Flight Risk is currently in theaters. Rated R.
My grade: B+
Principal Cast: Michelle Dockery, Mark Wahlberg, Topher Grace, Leah Remini, Monib Abhat, Paul Ben-Victor, Maaz Ali, Elise Patton, Senor Pablo, Savanah Joekel, Milko Kadikov, Georgi S. Georgiev, Atanas Srebev.
Directed by Mel Gibson.
Written by Jared Rosenberg.
Not a bald cap! That's his actual head... he shaved it! :)