Flight Risk is one of those movies that exists in a strange place where everything that should make it bad makes it good. From Marky “Mark” Wahlburgers’ illogical bald cap (more on that shortly), to the oddly horny dialogue, everything about it is just … weird. Yet as this wickedly entertaining (and profoundly stupid) thriller gets off the ground, I was struck with the notion that this is exactly the movie everyone in the production wanted to make. There are no mistakes in the filmmaking, per se, it’s just a wholly absurd premise executed in even more absurd ways. Yet somehow a bizarre magic is conjured and it all works, just so long as you’re not expecting, oh I dunno, Braveheart. Much of this film’s entertainment value comes from the fact that, despite its aggressive absurdity, everything is played with a straight face. In a world where just about everything is self-aware, and there’s an entire cottage industry devoted to purposefully bad movies, there’s an earnestness on display in Flight Risk that, for all the film’s narrative turbulence, manages to fly pretty high.
I would promise that those will be the last instances of aviation puns in this review, but I know myself, and if the opportunity arises over the next few paragraphs, I will not be able to resist sneaking in a few more.
The elevator pitch is solid gold: An Air Marshal (Michelle Dockery) is transporting a fugitive/potential state witness (Topher Grace) to trial via a charter flight on a janky plane with a seemingly friendly pilot (Marky “Mark” Wahlburgers). As it turns out, this pilot is actually bald, and has been hired by the mob to ensure that the witness never makes it to trial.
Jared Rosenberg’s script has all the hallmarks of a tight thriller from the ‘90s, and for the most part it manages to deliver a jet stream of suspense in pretty novel ways. The machinations of the plot are endlessly inventive, if ridiculous, allowing for the film to find a balance between reliably predictable and frequently surprising. You already know every beat, but the way they’re executed often comes way out of left field. Where the film suffers (or doesn’t, depending on your taste) is in its dialogue. It’s not stilted or poorly performed, it’s just odd. And oddly horny too. For example, when our hero is speaking over the radio to a pilot whose job it is to guide her through the process of flying a plane, he follows the standard procedure of staying calm, keeping a sunny attitude, and speaking of the eventual landing as a foregone conclusion. It’s textbook trauma management, but he also uses this template to make plans to take our heroine out for a night of dancing and drinks. This off-screen flight instructor is charming, to be sure, but it reads as creepy in a way that the film doesn’t seem to recognize. But again, it’s so bizarre that it proves to be an asset, at least in terms of my own taste, which includes an affinity for Kraft macaroni and cheese with slices of hot dogs mixed into it.
Another strange touch is that not only is Marky “Mark” Wahlburgers’ mysterious hitman/pilot here to do a job, but he also seems to be excessively turned on by it. He promises not just to kill his two potential victims, but to sexually assault them. He does this repeatedly and explicitly. I’m not lying when I say a large chunk of this film’s dialogue is devoted to Wahlburgers gleefully threatening to rape Topher Grace.
There is something fun indeed about an unhinged Wahlburgers performance. He’s an actor whose abilities typically seem to be locked and unlocked dependent entirely upon the skills of the director, which seems to be the case here. He’s definitely giving the exact performance this movie requires, and certainly the exact performance that director Mel Gibson has requested. Gibson, for all his resolute insanity, is someone who knows how to make a movie, and while Flight Risk is far below his more prestigious directorial efforts, it functions better visually than many of its modern contemporaries, at least on a moment-to-moment level. Single-location films live and die by their ability to make a small setting cinematic, and at no point does the airborne illusion falter. Honestly, instead of making Passion of the Christ 2: Back in Action, Mel should spend the rest of his career making dumb ‘90s action throwbacks until he ultimately dies of a heart attack in like five years or so. Dude is bright red and as leathery as a BDSM party. I’m no doctor, but I have worked at a few restaurants, and there’s always a regular who looks like Mel Gibson and stops showing up for his daily Coronarita because his heart exploded one night while he was cleaning his guns and getting mad at Jeopardy. His fate is unavoidable.
So now the reason you’re all here: the bald cap. Wahlburgers is wearing a bald cap that evoked laughter from every crowd I shared a theater with during the trailer. Laughter also occurred during the movie itself, when everyone in the room had ostensibly already been made aware of its rubbery existence. It’s a terrible bald cap. It’s a different color than Marky’s face skin, and during closeups you can actually see his hair bunching up under it. But it’s not the poor quality of the bald cap that bothers me (I actually found its inherent falsity a match for the film’s bonkers tone), it’s the fact that there’s no good reason for his character to be bald in the first place. As it plays out in the film, when the character first boards the plane and no one is any the wiser about his true identity, he wears a toupee and adopts a southern accent. This, one would assume, is because he needs to disguise himself.
But here’s the thing: our heroes do not know him. They do not know the real pilot he replaced (who, per his eventually discovered ID, is a man of color). There is literally no reason for him to wear any sort of disguise at all. Both he and the original pilot were total strangers to our heroes, who never even spoke to either character before boarding the plane. And since there is no reason for the character to wear a toupee as a disguise, there is no reason for Wahlburgers to wear a bald cap for the role. It’s a wholly functionless plot device, served by a wildly subpar makeup job, and it is the perfect item to capture the uniquely strange essence of this stupidly entertaining movie (emphasis on stupid).
But if I’m being honest, that dumb bald cap is 100% of the reason why I wanted to see this movie. So maybe they were onto something.
I realize now that I have become so obsessed with discussing the bald cap that I have not found a way to insert more aviation puns. I shouldn’t have given myself so much baggage before departing on this voyage of words. Hopefully this lazy final paragraph of aviation references will help me to stick the landing.
****Note: I have been informed that there’s a chance that there wasn’t a bald cap involved, but that they actually shaved Wahlburgers’, head. I’m not changing my review, even if confirmed, but I would like to add that if this is true then Marky “Mark” Wahlburgers has an insane head.
Directed by Mel Gibson
Written by Jared Rosenberg
Starring Michelle Dockery, Marky “Mark” Wahlburgers, Topher Grace, Monib Abhat
Rated R, 91 minutes
