Anyone who develops more than a passing taste for the movies is likely familiar with the infamous phenomenon of the January release date—a long-ridiculed time of year after studios have exhausted what’s left of their awards contenders, leaving little more than a dumping ground for whatever bomb-in-the-making they had in the tank to be dropped while everyone else catches up on their Oscar nominees. In recent years, however, the January release date has become something of a haven for cheesy thrillers and comedies with no delusions of grandeur, wherein the dreaded reputation of the season suddenly becomes a fertile hotbed for films designed to be “January films,” rather than those sidelined from a more prestigious release after testing poorly with focus groups.
To be sure, many films have weaponized the benefit of low expectations to turn the first month of the year into a period for minimal brain usage at the multiplex—see last year’s “The Beekeeper” and “I.S.S.,” or any number of films starring Gerard Butler—but “Flight Risk (2025),” just from the promotion, seems intended to exist in the traditional definition of the January film. Initially slated for release in October of 2024, the airborne thriller was booted by Lionsgate, just one month before that intended date, to the snowcapped (once-)wasteland of post-Oscar detoxing. Seeing the film, however, one would be hard-pressed to understand what made those Lionsgate executives ever think “Flight Risk” belonged anywhere else on the calendar.
Not the first airplane-set thriller released at this time of year—once again, give it up for King of January releases Gerard Butler with his creatively titled vehicle… “Plane”—“Flight Risk” functions somewhat uniquely (as far as this time of year goes, anyway) in that it restricts itself to a near-chamber-piece. In essence, the film is a real-time exploration of a 90-minute plane ride from middle-of-nowhere Alaska to slightly less middle-of-nowhere Anchorage, Alaska, armed with nothing more than a ticking clock and three passengers at each other’s throats.
The first of these passengers is Deputy U.S. Marshal Madelyn Harris (Michelle Dockery, shedding her beloved British accent for something a bit more Yankee), tasked with bringing a freshly apprehended mob associate on the lam (Topher Grace) to be a cooperating witness for the government. The third passenger? The chatty pilot set to bring them there in his hunk of aerial junk (Mark Wahlberg, whose own chosen Southern drawl gives you a perpetual reminder that nobody, least of all him, is taking this endeavor seriously). Things naturally go awry on this cramped flight when it’s discovered that their eccentric pilot is, in fact, a mob hitman sent to silence the prospective government witness by any means necessary.
You may notice that, by this point in the review, the director of “Flight Risk” has gone unnamed. That appears to have been another slight against the studio’s prospective confidence in the film, for it was much more tantalizing to advertise this as “From the Academy Award-winning director of ‘Braveheart’” than “From director Mel Gibson.”
That’s right, Gibson is back, and his first turn in the director’s chair since his Oscar-nominated work on “Hacksaw Ridge” proves to be a far cry from the awards-ready fare in which this constantly self-disgracing American icon (more an indictment on the USA than anything else) typically traffics. In fairness, though, the 1990s was probably the last real period when liking Mel Gibson was an entirely uncontroversial proposition in the American mainstream, so it only seems fitting that the increasingly right-wing nutjob would find sanctity in making a film essentially pulled right out of that period.
Sure enough, just about anybody could have directed “Flight Risk” with little change—scratch off Gibson’s name and throw in “Plane” director…[checks notes] Jean-François Riget, and little notice would be taken. On one hand, this is probably to the film’s benefit, as Gibson, for all his faults as both a human being and a needlessly grizzly stylist, seems to understand here that relative anonymity is far preferable to an obnoxious “pick me!” style of directing in such a contained space; had Matthew Vaughn or Guy Ritchie (or, god forbid, David Leitch) directed this, you can be damn sure the camera would be mounted to somebody’s fist every 15 seconds.
On the other hand, there are moments in which “Flight Risk” could possibly benefit from a bit more flair (… or flare) on the part of the man trying to go unnoticed until Trump’s second inauguration makes it totally fine to be openly discriminatory once again. (Note: this review was written before Gibson was announced as one of Trump’s “special ambassadors to Hollywood,” whatever that winds up meaning.) Any shot taking place outside the rickety airplane seems to have been thrown together from leftover CGI backdrops from last year’s “Society of the Snow”—one particular shot, involving fire extinguisher runoff trailing the back of the craft, seems an especially missed opportunity for some real visual kick.
At the end of the day, though, Mel Gibson’s task, true to the ethos of the recently reassessed January timeslot, seems to have been less about delivering above and beyond and more about not getting in his own way. Once you assess the excessively flippant dynamic between Wahlberg’s cowboy Butler impression, Dockery’s straight-man routine, and Grace’s deadpan motormouth, there’s enough to glean from the film’s straightforward thrills and radio-static paranoia to land this sucker with minimal damage.
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