January movies tend to have a certain feel to them. This time of year isn’t usually when Hollywood studios bring their A game, unless we’re talking about the expansion of an Oscar movie or something along those lines. For the most part, this stretch of the release schedule is full of lots of schlock, with the occasional surprise. (The found footage monster movie “Cloverfield” is a great example of an exception to the rule.) I say all this to set the table before talking about Mel Gibson’s new crime thriller “Flight Risk,” which has all the markings of a typical January movie. In some ways it is. In other ways, it’s worse than typical. But no matter how you want to cut it, this is the first terrible movie of 2025.

The film focuses on a pilot (Mark Wahlberg) ordered to transport an air marshal (Michelle Dockery) and a fugitive (Topher Grace) who will testify as a key witness in a high-profile trial. As they fly over the remote Alaskan wilderness, it is revealed that not everyone aboard this small plane is what they seem. Twist! The pilot is actually there to kill the witness in the name of the crime boss’s trial. Mid-flight chaos ensues.

There is so much to say about the film. / Witney Seibold from the film called “Flight Risk” a “typical January film” in its review of 5 out of 10and it’s hard to argue with that. What I would add to that, however, are the layers of absurdity here that both elevate it above that typical January movie while simultaneously making it a much more frustrating and unforgivable mess.

On the one hand, we have Wahlberg on board, one of the biggest stars in the world who has two Oscar nominations to his name, but the man we know from films like “The Depart” and “All the Money in the World” is nowhere found. Where it gets more complicated is the gibson of it all.

Gibson is a complicated figure, with a History of making anti-Semitic comments in addition to pleading guilty Battery from his ex-wife, Oksana Grigoriva. I’m not here to litigate his past, and I’m not here to discuss whether Gibson should or shouldn’t be allowed to make films. This movie exists, and nothing can be done about it. What everyone can probably agree on is that Gibson, at one point, knew how to make good movies – or at least movies that were generally well-regarded. This version of him is nowhere to be found in the content of this frustrating, logic-free thriller.

I won’t venture too much into spoiler territory here because I imagine some people might be morbid about this one. I have to admit, when I first saw the trailer from Cinemacon last year, it seemed like the kind of “So Bad It’s Good Movie” I live for. It brings me no joy to tell you that this is not the case. What is this? A film that feels like it should have gone straight to Redbox Back when it was still a thing. Yet somehow, because of the people involved, it got a theatrical release, something many really good films don’t even get offered these days. In this way, it’s borderline offensive.

In a movie about a guy (that guy being a bald, unhinged Mark Wahlberg) trying to kill people on a tiny plane over Alaska, I’m not asking for much. I feel like I know what I’m getting into. I’m just asking for some semblance of logic, but unfortunately there is none to be found here. It’s a small plane and yet at several points the air marshal and the witness simply refuse to look back to make sure the guy who tried to kill them isn’t trying to get away. Just look over your shoulder once or twice and most of the film’s problems could be avoided. Decisions like this are how a movie goes from “bad, but fun” to “terrible, and I’m actively irritated about it.”

Going back to the Mel Gibson factor, we’re talking about a filmmaker who made some truly beloved and massive hits in his time. “Braveheart,” although wildly inaccurate, was a smash hit and an Oscar darling in his time. It’s pretty fair to label this a “good” film, broadly speaking. It’s probably fair to say the same of “Apocalypto” and, while another complicated issue, it’s hard to call “The Passion of the Christ” an entirely bad film.

But hey, that Gibson version was a long time ago. What baffles me about what comes out of “risk of theft” is imagining that it’s somehow the same guy who did A damn good war film in “Hacksaw Ridge” only nine years ago. Again, I’m not defending Gibson. The man did and said some truly terrible things. I’m not even really here trying to separate the art from the artist. I’m just pointing out that he was, relatively recently, a guy who knew what he was doing behind the camera.

I have a hard time understanding how this guy was responsible for this mess. If this was a first time director making a movie that went straight to DVD or something, maybe that would be more forgivable. But Lionsgate got into bed with a guy like Gibson…for This? It’s difficult to reconcile.

This isn’t a formal review per se, so I’m not going to break this film down in a deep, analytical way. What I can do, however, is point out that a low bar has been set for movies in 2025. Of course, there are people who didn’t like Leigh Whannell’s “Wolf Man.” But a good director taking a big swing that doesn’t quite connect isn’t something we should label pretty terrible. A once arguably great director doing glorified direct-to-video garbage that is hard to defend from any perspective? It is terrible.

“Risk of Flight” is now in theaters.