InFlight peril , Mark Wahlberg jettison his usual melody of dimly perturbed gym - rat nobleness to meet a blathering psychotic scoundrel . How do we have intercourse the guy wire ’s a public - category creep ? betimes into this janky airborne suspense contraption , he drops not just his feigned yokel friendliness but also the baseball jacket pulled tightly over his noggin , which fall off to reveal a rather George Constanza paucity of follicle . Wahlberg insists he actually trim his drumhead for the role , but you look at that not - so - gleaming dome — whose pigment does n’t always seem to even match the actor ’s grin mug — and really have to marvel . very or not , the phalacrosis is baldly phony , a put - on from a jock badly cosplaying the profile of an oily murderer .
Wahlberg ’s character , Daryl Booth , is a pilot who moonlight as a hitman , or mayhap vice versa . He spend tenacious stretch ofFlight peril ’s short runtime null - tied in the back of a cramp pool jumper , sibilate menace and lecherous innuendos at a Deputy U.S. Marshal ( Michelle Dockery ) and her apprehended explosive charge , a mob comptroller ( Topher Grace ) release state witness . intimately foaming at the mouth , Wahlberg come across as less menacingly throw out of kilter than pathetically scummy . look out him berate the ship’s officer with venomous ejaculate - ons , you ’d almost swear that he was impart Mel Gibson ’s infamous DUI scene . Except that the director in the cockpit of this rickety vas is … Mel Gibson .
It was probably only a matter of time before Hollywood ’s premier god - fearing , publicist - amaze baffling guys joined force . What do you get when a star prone to fantasizing about real - world terrorist attacks hooks up with a director obsessed with gory martyrdom ? No doubt the two could make a genuinely bonkers saga of messianic mayhem , but that does n’t much describeFlight endangerment . It ’s more of a rinky - dink B-complex vitamin - movie howler , spoilt without ascending to the hallucinating heights of uncollectible gustation you might expect or even secretly desire from this pairing .
Gibson , up to this tip , has mostly directed bloated pageants of end and hurt — epic flagellation fests that bring the wars and sacrifices of yesterday to bloody aliveness . Again , Flight Riskis not of that ilk . It ’s more like a down - and - foul palate cleanser before the filmmaker ’s takings to more lordly matters . ( come to a multiplex near you , finally , possibly : The cacoethes of the Christ Part II ! ) To that end , there ’s certainly potential for solid thrills in the film ’s minimalist premiss , in which Wahlberg ’s lunatic killer masquerades as the flyboy carting Dockery ’s marshal from remote Alaska to less removed Anchorage . Most of the film takes place in the sky , as our heroine juggle her cuffed fugitive and the insensate - full-blood madman while getting a radio crash grade on how not to crash the metal razz .
But Gibson botches the designation at every act . You need n’t harbor any contempt for the dishonored filmmaker to pegFlight Riskas tinny and jerky heckle cannon fodder . His aeriform scenes are a hash of unconvincing turbulence , cutting between the digital equivalent weight of a toy carpenter’s plane and “ zomg ! ” close - ups of the actors furrowing and bellow during complimentary descent . Evidence of a mol within the Marshall ranks is uncovered via long - distance correspondence that often fail , through muck - up timing , to create the illusion of two mass converse . And the acoustical logistics of this acrobatics aircraft are conveniently wonky . One hour , the characters can hear each other over the yowl wind . The next , Daryl can sever his shackles undetected .
The dialogue , a black boxwood of tin - eared wisecracks good manners of first - meter screenwriter Jared Rosenberg , could pull up stakes a viewer thankful for a little high - elevation white noise . ( Scenes of queasy aeriform unsteadiness apart , this is the uncommon pic that might actually meet better on a trajectory with only one earbud in . ) The at - odds criminals onboard trade jerky Spirit Airlines cracks and talk about the “ Jackson Pollock ” all the nosediving makes in their trousers . The contained three - hander scenario should be a gift to the doer , but they ’re flying blind with this script and theater director . Dockery , whose graceful severity has served her well inDownton Abbey’sworld of refined manners , keeps her head down and her upper backtalk stiff . And Grace could play this snivel , sarcastic milquetoast in his sopor . He ’s on twerpy automatic pilot .
Wahlberg , meanwhile , is out of his element . In so much asFlight Riskhas a hook , it ’s a hazard to see the pious action Italian sandwich cast against case and back in touch with his dark side for the first prison term since his breakout role as the alpha - bro young man from Hell in 1996’sFear . But while that picture put his beefcake blankness to good usance , he just seems miscast as a rave sadist here . The carrying into action takes its cue from the unnatural hairstyling ; if the smoothed cranium is real , the malefic foolery certainly is n’t . Only when the virtuoso grit his teeth and lose it his own thumb to escape handcuffs do you purchase what he ’s commit down . That ’s the very kind of pain - junkie determination you ’d wait fromun film de Gibson and Wahlberg .
