"Flight Risk" is a modest affair. It sports a clean modest budget of $25 million, and is set almost entirely on the plane of a small plane. There are only three actors on screen for most of the film's mercifully quick runtime, and the concept is easy to get your head around. In execution, it feels like a sure first turn of a neophyte director. Shabby perhaps, but well-intentioned, and only occasionally straining against his apparently limited means.

Only this is not a first-time director's film. This is a film by Mel Gibson, the once revered Oscar darling and hitmaker, now ostracized for his many offensive public outbursts and unhealthy personal views. Gibson, as director, oversees a number of heavy, violent historical pictures, many of them impressively executed and visually stunning. This was the man who stepped up the Hollywood epic game with "Braveheart" and turned Jesus' last few days into a brutal "horror"-esque gore reel with "The Passion of the Christ." His films could be found to be hard-boiled, a little hard-christian, or perhaps fatuously melodramatic, but they never lacked ambition. Two of his films were performed in ancient languages.

With "Flight Risk," Gibson's landmark career saw him return to the practical and humble. In 2016, Academy voters seemed halfway ready to welcome him back into the room by nominating his war film Hacksaw Ridge for six Oscars (he won two), but whatever goodwill he garnered, Gibson immediately burst into tears to find solace in the Hands of Shock from Dunderhead's right flank. Gibson was recently named a Hollywood ambassador of sorts for the Trump administration, though the specifics of his mission remain unclear.

"Flight risk", however, may be the last call of the level-headed director of diplomacy. It is a simple thriller with little political and no moral touch. It's not epic or preachy. It's an easy, simple Saturday matinee.

The "flight risk" room is so effective and was so clearly designed to be done on the cheap, that will be done by Roger Corman or Jason Bloom are up. Michelle Dockery played a hard-working U.S. Marshal named Harris, who is tasked with transporting a mob accountant named Walter (Todder Grace) from his Alaskan hideout to the big city. She aims to testify against the Mafia Don. Harris's only means of transporting Walter is a small, rickety, private charter plane flown by a colorful local pilot named Daryl (Gibson's "Daddy's Home 2" and "Dad Stu" co-star Mark Wahlberg). Most of the movie will take place on that plane. The movie will end with that ... Well, I won't spoil if it goes down, crashes, or does a secret third thing.

However, it seems Daryl is not what he seems. Early in the flight, Walter and Harris discover that Daryl is, in fact, a brutal, foul-mouthed killer with a penchant for torture. He killed and replaced the original pilot and is flying his charges to god-knows-where to kill them both in a creative way. Why not kill them both at once? Because Daryl wants to take his time; When Harris learns about Daryl's previous crimes, there are references to slowly eyeballing and such.

Wahlberg is wrong as an evil serial killer. He aims to be menacing and sinister, but comes across as worse than a particularly awkward lager to be found in a Boston pub. Lacking Hannibal Lecter's vital sense of terror, the film never comes across as fully menacing. It feels more like a problem-solving exercise than a thriller.

Walter, the script (by Ed Rosenberg) assures us, is a funny, nervous-energy-filled chaser, but Grace seems too settled and comfortable in the role for his character's troubled features. Like Wahlberg, he doesn't bring the right kind of growing energy to his role, happy to stay in the realm of "genius." Both characters seem to have escaped more adult thrillers because they weren't comfortable going to edgier extremes.

A farthing better than Wahlberg or Grace—indeed, carrying the film on its back—is Dockery, who affects the steely resolve of an action hero, encountering clear and barely-there solutions to extreme problems. She reads like a Starfleet officer, a capable problem solver who can never run out of ideas. When she loses her cool, it is not a moment of temporary madness, but perhaps a considered moment of stability. It's okay, she seems to realize, to smack Daryl in the face at this point.

After the initial plot twist for the first act (revealed in the film's trailers), "flight risk" has no further surprises for the audience. The tension is not so much mounted and the ridge gently. Gibson doesn't bring any sense of verve or "flight risk" style that no other halfway house director could bring. It is a matter of fact, plain and simple. Ordinary on a plane. It feels like it's meant for regular cable TV consumption, recommended after you've finished watching three or Four episodes of Law & Order. Or, more appropriately, it feels like a January movie. Even if it came out in July, "flying risk" would be a January movie.

"Flight Risk" perfectly serviceable, completely innocent fun. It's good. It's meh.

This is a confusing turn of events, however, for a director as hotly contested and usually ambitious as Gibson. Of course, no film exists without the political—all art is political—but the director seems determined to be as neutral as possible with this low-budget thriller. He does not make statements, avoiding any notion that he may be traced. "Risk of Flight" is quintessentially the airport novel, as nutritious as a marshmallow.

Which, a cynical viewer might suspect, is a calculation on Gibson's part. He can feel that his politics and his ... controversies ... will take the audience away, so he has to be on his best behavior. Can he make a movie for only $25 million? Yes. Can he tell a story effectively? Yes. Are the actors good? They are being exploited. It's tight and stylish and unique? Not at all. There is nothing to be offended by "flight risk", apparently by design. There's also nothing to get excited about in terms of "flight risk", it floats easily to the middle of the road.

But no film is released in a vacuum. Some may shy away from "flight risk" because of Gibson's off-screen shenanigans, and that's their right. Some can only break up so hard. It is certainly a period of bad timing that Gibson He just became Trump's ambassador Then when his movie hit the theaters. It will be difficult to watch "Flight Risk" without thinking about what the director intends to do in Hollywood in 2025.

Other than that, the movie is just okay.

/Movie Rating: 5 out of 10

"Flight Risk" is now in theaters.