Mel Gibson's ‘Flight Risk' Destroyed by Critics

The Thursday previews are in, and Mel Gibson’s “Flight Risk” earned $1M in receipts. That’s probably good enough for it to finish at #1 this weekend.

As expected, reviews for “Flight Risk” aren’t good, in fact they’re terrible. It has a 26% on Rotten Tomatoes and 36 on Metacritic. Lionsgate waited until the very last minute to lift the embargo on this one. Do you blame them? I was impressed Gibson actually managed to convince a studio to greenlight a directing project of his — albeit one with just a $10M budget.

Quite honestly, “Flight Risk” isn’t as bad as these reviews make it out to be. No, it’s not “Apocalypto,” which is still Gibson’s crowning achievement as a director, but it’s watchable. You have to give this movie credit for knowing exactly just how ridiculous it is. It has no preconceived ambitions to be high art. It doesn’t take itself seriously. It’s just Gibson and Mark Wahlberg having a blast in telling this ludicrous story.

Wahlberg’s semi-bald haircut is a distraction. I mean, how can it be? Have you seen how he looks in this film? He plays a mob hitman who fools a federal agent into allowing him to pilot a plane carrying an FBI informant (Topher Grace). The implausible nature of the film is absurd. And yet, never once did I check my watch throughout its breezy 91 minute runtime. That means something.

Of course, Gibson’s talents are clearly above all this. “Flight Risk” is his first directorial effort since 2016’s “Hacksaw Ridge,” which now feels like it was released in a different era. ‘Hacksaw’ earned six Oscar nominations including Picture, Actor (Andrew Garfield) and, yes, Director. It was Gibson’s second directing Oscar nom.

You’d expect that after directing such an Oscar-lauded film — it also earned $180M at the box-office — Gibson would easily be able to get another project going, but that hasn’t been the case. Gibson’s post-’Hacksaw’ output has been disappointing, but that’s probably because the times changed and opportunities turned scarce for him in an industry that decided to re-cancel him, for the second time.

Gibson has mostly been starring in B-movies since ‘Hacksaw,’ and hasn’t gone back to directing until “Flight Risk.” His wish to direct “Lethal Weapon 5” will probably not come to fruition, but he plans to direct his ‘Passion of the Christ’ sequel next year which, no doubt, much like the previous film, will be independently financed by numerous parties.