Flight Risk - 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray

The Man Without A Face. Braveheart. The Passion of the Christ. Apocalypto. With such iconic films to his name, you have to step back and wonder what the hell happened with Mel Gibson and Flight Risk. It’s not that the material is inherently beneath Mel as a director; it’s that it shows nothing of the skill and respectability the man has enjoyed as a filmmaker (personal private issues notwithstanding). How does a man with this level of talent go from Hacksaw Ridge and earning a Best Director Oscar Nomination to a film that trips and falls at virtually every step of its 91-minute runtime?

US Marshal Madolyn Harris (Michelle Dockery) is back in the field and has just run down the mob’s best accountant, Winston (Topher Grace). The problem is they’re stuck in Middle of Nowhere, Alaska and need to get Winston on a plane from Anchorage to New York City so he can testify. The only way out is a private charter plane, and yokel Daryl Booth (Mark Whalberg) is the only pilot available. A smooth and easy 75-minute flight turns into a nightmare when Daryl turns out to be more than a simple pilot, leaving Madolyn and Winston in a fight for their lives with no one to land the plane. 

Did you see the trailer for Flight Risk? If not, then here you go:

There. Now you’ve seen the entire film. I saved you 88 minutes and 30 seconds of your time. Not even joking. That’s the entire movie only with a weird cover of Psycho Killer playing for the soundtrack. And what exactly did I save you by embedding the trailer? Some of the worst poop, pee, and sexual inuendo dialog ever written by an eighth-grader. Some of the most on-the-nose obvious plot cliches of any thriller made. I also saved you some of the worst CGI and flat, lifeless LED location backgrounds this side of Tommy Wisseau’s The Room. 

I didn’t go into this movie expecting greatness. I heard it wasn’t the best film, but I figured with Mad Mel at the helm, there might be some level of competency for a pulpy, entertaining action flick. Sadly and frustratingly, that didn’t happen. There’s nothing of that daring bravado of Gibson’s past accomplishments as a director to suggest he was the man behind the camera. It’s such a hacky pedestrian piece it’s honestly baffling that Jared Rosenberg’s script went ahead in this form. And speaking of the script, this one languished on the infamous Black List for years and somehow this is the final product. I have to wonder if something was lost in translation along the way.

Of our three on-screen cast members, Dockery manages along as an unbelievable but tough U.S. Marshal with a traumatic past. Topher Grace comes out relatively unscathed doing what he does best as the comedy relief, but he also gets some strong poignant moments leading into the third act. Wahlberg was apparently left to improvise his lines, but for a character trying to get the mental uppherhand, utterances like “I made a Jackson Pollock in my pants!” and frequent prison rape jokes deflate any menace about as fast as his stupidly shaved head. I get they were trying to go for a Dennis Rader vibe, but the plot point of his hair doesn’t even make it past the first twenty minutes and wasn't even necessary for the character. 

Flight Risk is just a big, bad, dumb movie. Not even a fun big bad dumb movie. Not the kind of bad movie you can pass some drinks around with friends and scarf down cheap pizza with. It’s the kind of bad movie that makes you wonder what happened with Mel Gibson here. He’s apparently still trying to make a two-part sequel to The Passion of the Christ along with the still-possible Lethal Weapon 5. We can only hope those films turn out better because Flight Risk was not his best moment in the director's chair. 

Vital Disc Stats: The 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray 
Flight Risk aborts takeoff for a two-disc 4K UHD + Blu-ray + Digital release from Lionsgate. The 4K is pressed on a Region Free BD66 disc with a Region A BD50 disc serving the 1080p edition. Both discs are housed in a two-disc eco-friendly case with an identical slipcover. The discs load to an animated main menu with basic navigation options. If you’re so inclined, there is a limited edition SteelBook also available with a plastic slipcover offering you Wahlberg’s moronically shaved head as the big reveal. 

Shot digitally, Flight Risk makes for a pretty basic 2160p 2.39:1 HDR10 transfer. Visually, this isn’t a very exciting film. The added resolution doesn’t do the VFX tricks any favors. When the footage is in a real location and our main cast, it can look quite good with crisp, sharp details. The issue is so often due to the LED backgrounds (the film was shot mostly in a studio in Las Vegas). The two elements are always at odds with each other visually. This is especially the case when Daryl reveals himself and they’re about to crash into a mountain. The discrepancy between the live actors and the airplane set versus the blurry nondiscript background is almost cartoonish. Likewise, the CGI opening shot of the motel, a moose, and some of the airplane’s near-miss moments really don’t hold up in 2160p. Especially the big crash-landing climax. In these moments, the Blu-ray actually fared a tad better. When the footage is of a real airplane flying through the Alaskan snow-topped mountains, it’s striking and beautiful. When it’s back to that set in Vegas, the image is a mishmash. Flipping between discs, the HDR10 grade also doesn’t give the 4K much heft. It might help some of the colors and lighting, but it also works against those cheap visual effects shots. Despite a relatively strong bitrate, I felt like there was also a bit of noticeable video noise throughout. At the end of the day, it's a decent 4K presentation; it gets the job done, but not a showstopper. 

For our audio package, we have a respectable Dolby Atmos mix to enjoy. On the whole, there’s some slick sound design work at hand. One of the better moments is when Dockery is trying to talk to Wahlberg while he has his headset on and he gets her to put on the extra pair and the sound design goes almost silent, pulling out all of the incidental ambients and just leaving it with a low-fi recording of New Order’s Blue Monday. Why that song is used is beyond me, but it’s effective sound design all the same as it switches between their conversation and Topher trying to get their attention. The dialog sounds clear, for the most part, but additional off-screen dialog and phone calls with actors Leah Remini, Paul Ben-Victor, and Maaz Ali sound particularly weightless and inorganic. The rest of the sound design checks the boxes well enough, and there’s some nice overhead activity with all of the turbulence shuddering the plane and so forth. LFE rumbles away well and good, the turbulence and the big climactic landing hit nicely. Overall, this track works.

Bonus features are the same for both discs. A barely there making-of and a theatrical trailer. That's it.

• Risk Management: Making Flight Risk (HD 8:10)
• Theatrical Trailer

Conceptually, Flight Risk could have been a solid pulp thriller. The elements are there for a nice and tight contained thriller where the stakes are high and the cinematic adrenaline is a rush. Unfortunately, that movie didn’t land at its assigned gate. Poorly paced, bad dialog, semaphore-telegraphed plot twists, awful visual effects; the film is just a mess. Every filmmaker has a bad movie in them, and if Flight Risk is Mel Gibson’s one contribution to that catalog, I hope it’s his only offering. On 4K UHD, Flight Risk takes off for a descent A/V presentation. The 4K transfer is good, not terrible, but it's held back by some shoddy visual effects work. The Dolby Atmos mix at least checks the boxes. Bonus features are a barely there effort with a measly 8-minute making-of featurette. I didn’t like the movie. Technically speaking, the 4K disc is okay. However, at the premium price tag that we're seeing a lot of our favorite films are commanding these days, I say save your money for something better and worth your time. Skip It.