‘Flight Risk’ Has Wahlberg and Gibson in Movie Purgatory
The former A-listers are now flying economy.
I try not to let my thoughts on artists’ personal lives dictate my entire worldview on their art (if I did, I’d never look at another Picasso). But I must admit some schadenfreude at where Mark Wahlberg and Mel Gibson are currently dwelling in their careers. After reaching the top of the A-list, they’re now slumming it in Flight Risk, a January B-movie that feels like a paycheck for both when they used to have far greater selection over their projects.
For Gibson, this is the result of the industry never accepting any of his comeback attempts. He may have returned to the A-list after his infamous drunk driving arrest, but once he was caught on tape verbally abusing his then-girlfriend, that was it. Of course, to say Gibson was “canceled” is incorrect. He’s just not as famous or as powerful as he used to be, and he is not entitled to fame or power. He is not a Lethal Weapon sequel away from being named People’s Sexiest Man Alive again. Even after the critical and commercial acclaim of his last movie, Hacksaw Ridge, Lionsgate chose to leave his name off the marketing.
As for Wahlberg, his career is in the fallout of taking a series of paycheck gigs rather using his starpower to make a serious movie. It feels like with The Gambler, a drama where he lost 60 pounds and received zero major award nominations, Wahlberg felt it wasn’t worth the trouble to be a real actor anymore unless it was working with director Peter Berg on American tough guy dramas like Lone Survivor (bad), Deepwater Horizon (good), and Patriots Day (a way for Wahlberg to live out his terrorist-stopping fantasies). Beyond that, there’s not a market for Wahlberg’s “I’m a smart criminal,” or “I’m a tough cop” movies, and he seems largely content to take on streaming movies that nobody cares about. The days of Wahlberg teaming with Martin Scorsese or Paul Thomas Anderson are long since past.
But more than that, Flight Risk shows an actor and director who are largely indifferent to the film they’re making. This a real-time chamber piece thriller where almost all of the action is contained to the small passenger plane and has Mark Wahlberg’s assassin trying to off a cooperating witness (Topher Grace) while a U.S. Marshall (Michelle Dockery) tries to get the witness safely to Anchorage, Alaska. Grace and Dockery showed up to work, and if this movie had less toxic guys front and center, I imagine it would receive a warmer reception. And even if it didn’t, you can tell who cares about their job in this movie and who doesn’t.
Gibson’s direction is efficient and workmanlike, but certainly not detail-oriented or passionate like he’s shown with his previous movies. This isn’t the guy who insisted that The Passion of the Christ be in Aramaic for historical accuracy. This is a guy who knows how to set up his cameras, keep the production on time, and doesn’t concern himself with the logic that when the plane goes up everyone has to use headsets to communicate, but then ditches that convention the second it becomes inconvenient to the plot. Flight Risk isn’t necessarily an admission of defeat by Gibson, but it’s not exactly an offbeat lark he’s doing between bigger pictures (e.g. James Wan making Malignant between Aquaman movies).
While Gibson’s direction is adequate, Wahlberg appears indifferent at best. You see this fairly early on when it’s revealed that his assassin is wearing a hat and a toupee to cover up male-pattern baldness. Wahlberg is notably not bald, and so he shaved his head for the effect, which is certainly some kind of commitment, but in execution, it’s a meaningless addition. This kind of behavior was pointed out to me once by a fellow critic when watching The Tourist, a film where Depp’s character uses e-cigarettes for no real reason. It’s an “actorism,” something the actor suggests for the character and the director chooses not to push back. An insecure assassin who feels the need to wear a toupee would be interesting, but Wahlberg didn’t put that much thought into it. The wig comes off, and then he just sexually menaces Grace and Dockery’s characters in between bouts of being tied up.
Watching Wahlberg, I never get the sense that he’s excited to play off his co-stars in the way that Grace and Dockery have a solid rapport. He wants to “win” the movie, and that means having the most menacing character and alerting the audiences that he’s so game for this movie he’s going to have a weird haircut. That’s not acting! The impression I get is that Wahlberg likes working with Gibson (the two previously co-starred in Daddy’s Home 2 and Father Stu) and he likes money.
Flight Risk is not a film meant to punish those involved or those watching it. Grace and Dockery both come from successful TV shows (That 70s Show and Downton Abbey, respectively) and while film stardom has proven elusive in their careers, they work steadily and will continue to do so. Again, swap out Gibson and Wahlberg with two guys who don’t carry the same baggage, and you likely have a movie that is not only better but would probably avoid the January dumping ground.
Gibson and Wahlberg have made their choices. For Gibson, this is where he lives now, and it’s almost certainly where he’ll dwell for the rest of his life—B-movies trading on his past work but rarely using him as a selling point unless the marketing relies on controversy. As for Wahlberg, he’s reinvented himself before and perhaps he will do it again, but for now, he seems shockingly content to keep nosediving.