US Marshal Madelyn Harris (Michelle Dockery) is escorting Mob lawyer Winston (Topher Grace) on a flight from Alaska en path to testifying in a trial. As soon as in mid-air, they uncover the pilot ‘Dwayne’ (Mark Wahlberg) is definitely a hitman despatched to assassinate Winston.
After the scope of Braveheart, The Ardour Of The Christ, Apocalypto and Hacksaw Ridge, Mel Gibson is engaged on a smaller canvas for his sixth directorial function. The sort of motion thriller Hollywood is meant to not make anymore, Flight Threat is a chamber piece, confined nearly totally to a single location — a rickety aircraft described as a “kite with seat belts”. It might not be significantly novel however it’s effectively made, effectively carried out by a solid who perceive the task, and has sufficient twists, turns and tweaks to components to maintain it contemporary. It additionally options the scary sight and sound of Mark Wahlberg warbling his method via New Order’s ‘Blue Monday’. Be warned.
Showing on the 2020 Black Listing of Hollywood’s hottest scripts (that 12 months’s listing additionally delivered Todd Haynes’ Could December and Scott Derrickson’s upcoming The Gorge), Jared Rosenberg’s screenplay is inventory stuff — a authorities agent, a witness needing safety, a killer, a rat in the home — however economically spun and effectively sustained.
It’s a bit just like the ’90s by no means went away.
A bit like an off-off Broadway model of Con Air, this pitches three characters caught on a aircraft, taking part in thoughts video games in-between bouts of brutal bodily violence. Because the flight heads in direction of Anchorage, there’s sabotaged navigation, birds hitting the windscreen, shut shaves with mountainsides, an modern use of sun shades and the age-old debate concerning the risks of firing weapons on board plane. With its human-sized stakes, bruising fights and Gibson’s identify on the credit, it’s a bit just like the ’90s by no means went away.
It’s the sort of generic motion thriller the place the Mob boss is named Moretti, the legislation enforcer has a troubled previous, sensible folks do silly issues and characters come again from stab wounds, gun photographs, flare hits, you identify it, with jaw-dropping ease.
However what elevates Flight Threat is that it does have the odd contact of texture; Madelyn’s over-the-radio flirtation with the pilot (Maaz Ali) speaking her aircraft down is a shock and a delight. Additionally, Wahlberg, sporting an unflattering combover, has a ball taking part in the hitman: by turns giddy, pervy and sinister, he’s an unnamed terminator made much more fascinating as a result of he couldn’t give a jot whether or not he lives or dies. He makes a greater than worthy opponent for Michelle Dockery, who makes her one-note Clarice Starling-a-like interesting, and Topher Grace, whose nervy informant is essentially the comedian reduction. Briefly, a brisk, punchy, inoffensively foolish blast of in-flight leisure.
It received’t win any awards for originality however Flight Threat is a enjoyable, unpretentious, tight 91 minutes — particularly if you happen to’ve at all times jonesed to see Downton Abbey’s Girl Mary cream somebody with a hearth extinguisher.
