REVIEW: Flight Risk (2025)

Movie Reviews

Flight Risk is the kind of movie I’ve been saying Hollywood should start making again: a relatively low-budget thriller that doesn’t need to make much money to be successful. What I forgot to mention is that they actually have to be good. Flight Plan had a lot of promise, and it has some decent thriller elements, but it drowns in a sea of awful dialogue, a plot that relies on the hero being stupid, never-ending attempts at humor that undermine the tension, character arcs that aren’t built properly, and a terrible villain performance.

Winston (Topher Grace), a mob accountant on the run, is arrested in Alaska and, after agreeing to testify against a Mafia boss, heads back to New York in the custody of Deputy US Marshal Madeline Harris (Michelle Dockery). But first, they have to get out of the mountains and into Anchorage via a biplane piloted by dippy yokel Daryl Booth (Mark Wahlberg). Once they’re in the air, Booth proves to be more than just a goofy pilot, and it becomes clear that the mob will go to any lengths to make sure Winston doesn’t testify.

That plot synopsis isn’t half bad, and Flight Risk is the kind of high-concept thriller the 90s loved. The problem is that it’s not good at any of the things that made a lot of those 90s flicks so much fun. There’s a veritable lack of suspense, mostly because the movie can’t stop making jokes for a whole minute to let the tension build. This role is not a stretch for Topher Grace, who channels his Eric Forman persona to constantly crack wise, acting more like a member of the audience than a character in the film – particularly the character who’s in the most danger, since he’s the one the mob wants to rub out. Every time Flight Risk puts the screws to you, Grace comes out with another sarcastic line that takes you out of the plot and reminds you not to take anything you see seriously. I’d be lying if I said some of them aren’t funny, but there are way too many of them.

Mark Wahlberg isn’t any better, somehow feeling even less serious than Grace, and he’s supposed to be the source of most of the danger. The trailer gives away that Wahlberg’s Booth is actually a hitman sent by the Mafia to kill Winston before he can testify – a reveal that happens quite early in Flight Risk. But he’s nowhere near as scary or intimidating as he should be, with the film having to go to ridiculous lengths to make him look like a real threat. In one particularly ludicrous scene, his body sustains way more damage from a certain device than you can believe a half-pint like Wahlberg could stand.  Booth is supposed to be crazy, so Wahlberg hams it up like he does in pretty much every performance he’s ever given outside of Boogie Nights, but the result is that Booth feels more like a tired joke than a villain. It also makes you wonder why the mob would send this loon instead of an actual professional.

Michelle Dockery easily gives the best performance in Flight Risk, and she’s not great; she’s just fine, doing what she can in a bland role. Her character, Madeline, has the most potential of the main three, and I appreciate that the lousy script does at least try to give her some characterization. I also enjoyed that Madeline is not a perfect, smug girl-boss like the women in virtually every movie today; she’s tough with Winston because she’s a federal agent dealing with a criminal, but she can also be friendly, and she’s deferential to her superiors. But what’s most interesting is that she makes mistakes… a lot of them. And that’s the problem: she makes too many, and while some keep her flawed, relatable, and vulnerable, others just make her look stupid. There’s also an attempt to give her a character arc, but it doesn’t make any sense considering the inciting incident, so it feels cheap.

What makes these failures worse is that Flight Risk has some neat ideas. This is almost entirely a three-person story, and except for the very beginning and very end, it takes place in a small biplane. The sense of claustrophobia is effectively captured in some of the shots, with the three characters in frame in the cramped plane, and while it would have been a lot better if the plot or dialogue tried to capitalize on this, it at least looks good. There are also frequent conversations between Madeline and different people she talks to over the radio, like her boss at the US Marshals office and a pilot trying to help her fly. But, as with the characters on board the plane with her, these conversations too often dip into needless humor that distracts from the tension of an inexperienced person trying to control a plane. They also never feel like natural conversations because nobody talks to each other the way humans talk to each other in real life. It’s always some form of heightened dialogue, and it’s all wrong for this movie.

Flight Risk had so much potential to be a throwback to the era of the thriller, and the setup brings to mind movies like Narrow Margin and Red Eye. Unfortunately, it isn’t nearly as good as either of those films (both of which are well worth your time), and it feels like it isn’t even trying to be. The focus on humor instead of tension is fatal in this case, and what should have been a neat little high-concept pulse-pounder is a bad joke that never lands told by people trying too hard to get a laugh. This is the first film from screenwriter Jared Rosenberg, and he needs a lot more practice before he makes another attempt. On the other hand, this is not director Mel Gibson’s first rodeo, and it’s hard to believe the guy who made Braveheart directed Flight Risk.

Let us know what you thought of Flight Risk in the comments!

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