Reviewed by Alicia Glass 

An Air Marshal transporting a runaway fugitive, as in a flight risk, in a plane over the Alaskan wilderness, finds her mission compromised! 

One wouldn’t think that a movie that has only three actors conflicting in a plane for most of its runtime would be as amusing as Flight Risk turns out to be. But with Mark Wahlberg as our villain and Topher Grace as our fugitive, everything becomes a lot more funny, at least for the audience. Make sure your seatbelt is fastened, and let’s dive into this! 

So Madolyn (Michelle Dockery) is an Air Marshal with an unfortunate recent track record with her job, but who has been given a second chance to bring Winston (Topher Grace) in to testify at trial, come hell or high water. And of course Winston has managed to piss off some high-ranking mobster family and their boss, who’s ready to send all manner of enforcers and firepower to keep Winston and everyone with him from ever saying anything. Maddie sure doesn’t want that to happen, but she already has her hands full with the incredibly whiny Winston, so she’s not terribly suspicious of the overly-friendly pilot Daryl (Mark Wahlberg) of the plane she just loaded her charge into, to get the both of them to their rendezvous as fast as possible. 

With only three people on the plane, one of them just has to be the bad guy, and since the trailers already gave the game away, we know that Daryl is the piano-wire-toting assassin conscripted to kill Winston. We would’ve said hired, but as Daryl happily tells Winston while cutting off his air, he does this sort of thing for fun and for free. 

So in between rounds of knockout-tag between Madolyn and Daryl, Maddie talks on the radio to some helpful voices, mostly Van Sant (Leah Remini) back at the office, who helped get Maddie back in the saddle and is trying to find out who they can trust with this mission gone awry, and the charming flight control officer Hassan (Maaz Ali), who’s trying to help Maddie safely land the plane, and maybe also so he can get that date Maddie promised him later. 

The film feels awfully short, though it does boast a director with an outstanding pedigree – that’s right folks, this zany little hidden gem is directed by none other than Mel Gibson, his own unique and overzealous self. And while most of the twists, as in who’s the real bad guy behind the murderous pilot shenanigans, are pretty easy to spot coming, the film has plenty of cheeky one-liners and fine small-space slapstick combat to keep us the audience amused. 

Keep your hands on the throttle and off my neck, to catch Flight Risk out on Bluray from Lionsgate Films now!