Flight Risk (2025) is directed by Mel Gibson and written by Jared Rosenberg. It stars Michelle Dockery, Mark Wahlberg, Topher Grace, Leah Remini, Maaz Ali, Paul Ben-Victor, and Eilise Patton. The story follows Madolyn (Dockery), a disgraced air marshall who gets one last shot to prove herself in the field by escorting Winston (Grace), a seemingly good-hearted fugitive, to trial so he can testify against a powerful crime boss. All goes as planned until their pilot, Daryl (Wahlberg), reveals he’s actually a killer hired to eliminate Winston before he reaches the witness stand. Trapped thousands of feet in the air above the desolate Alaskan wilderness, Madolyn and Winston are forced into a game of cat & mouse with the only man who can ground them safely but treats even his own survival as an afterthought. 

I want to start by ripping off the bandaid and making it clear that this is objectively a bad movie. Whatever skills these actors typically display are completely overshadowed by terribly bland characters who are consistently written to be silly, stupid, and everything in between. Dockery and Grace are mostly just victims of the terrible script, but Wahlberg is just laughable here. He screams, laughs maniacally, and opens his eyes wider than most humans can, but the performance features not even a hint of nuance/depth. The script provides the character with almost no backstory, but what’s even worse is that he’s given nothing remarkable to do. For most of the runtime, he’s handcuffed to a wall and just talks some shit that’s no worse than what you’d hear from a typical Bostonian.

Although the story/plot/premise is tailor-made for a straightforward, serious-minded thriller, Gibson inexplicably approaches the material as a low-IQ action comedy. The thing is, the movie never feels like it’s written to be a comedy despite the occasional “so bad, it’s good” laughs. Even then, the laughs feel like they’re a result of the awful script that was never intended to be funny in the first place. Maybe Gibson received the script, identified it as awful, and realized the only chance it had to be good was to inject a bit of self-awareness, but that seems unlikely. If this is the case, then my response would be: “Why not lean into it to make it even funnier?”

In addition to the goofy, dumb dialogue, the film doesn’t seem to be concerned with portraying the physics of flight even halfway accurately. For example, there’s one sequence in which the plane takes a nosedive straight for the ground and about ten feet from impact (I’m not kidding), Dockery’s character is able to pull up and save their flight. I’ve never flown before, but I’m also not an idiot. Speaking of things in this film that make little sense, the characters constantly say/do things and then contradict them almost immediately. For example, there’s one moment in which Winston stops Madolyn from shooting Daryl because he’s the only one who can fly the plane. Two scenes later, Winston tells Madolyn to “just shoot him” despite the fact that seemingly nothing has changed since he told her not to shoot him. Another example involves a long sequence dedicated to the characters trying and failing to contact someone on their radio until Madolyn randomly (and hilariously) remembers that she had a working (seemingly better than it should) satellite phone the entire time. It’s been a long time since I’ve felt like a film sequence was only created to troll the viewer (and not in a good way). 

Overall, this is sure to be one of the worst movies of 2025 despite the fact that it’s still early in the year. It’s poorly acted and unintelligent, and it features some of the worst dialogue I’ve heard in a while. That being said, the movie is often so consistent in its over-the-top stupidity that it achieves a surprisingly effective “good, bad movie” quality. It’s all dumb as hell, but it’s the kind that’s easy to laugh at. I can’t recommend it in any way, but if you find yourself watching it, you might have a good time – just not how the filmmakers intended. D