Mark Wahlberg is a Country-Fried Villain in Mel Gibson's Ferociously Adequate Flight Risk

Let us dispense with the formalities and get this out of the way. Mel Gibson is a monster whose career should have ended when he was captured on tape telling the mother of his child that he hoped that she was sexually assaulted by a group of men.

It’s not easy to combine racism, virulent misogyny, and violent sociopathy in the space of a single awful sentence, but Gibson managed it.

This hurt Gibson’s career, but it did not end it. Gibson was given an extended professional time-out, during which he was implored to sit in a corner for a long while and not emerge until he had thought long and hard about what he had done and why he had done it.

He didn’t do that, but Hollywood forgave him anyway.

Then, after a few years in the wilderness, Gibson was welcomed back by some in the business for the noblest of reasons: he was still famous, popular, and beloved by people unconcerned by racism, homophobia, anti-Semitism, and all of the other terrible isms inside that man’s fetid swamp of a brain. Also, there was money to be made.

Gibson was nominated for Best Director for 2016’s Hacksaw Ridge, which also scored nominations for Best Film, Best Actor, Best Film Editing, Best Sound Editing, and Best Sound Mixing.

There is no higher honor in the film industry than the Oscars. The Academy decided that Gibson, having shown no remorse or spiritual growth, was no longer toxic and radioactive, so working with him was no longer stigmatized, particularly for Mark Wahlberg.

Wahlberg committed a hate crime when he was a young man, so he has a vested interest in terrible people being forgiven for their transgressions.

Gibson is so revered by people who hate women and black people but love Donald Trump that the president appointed him to be an ambassador to Hollywood, with a mandate to bring business back home to God’s own USA.

Jon Voight and Sylvester Stallone were also given this dubious honor. It seems safe to assume that absolutely nothing will come of it.

With that out of the way, let’s talk Flight Risk, Gibson’s follow-up to Hacksaw Ridge. Gibson’s latest will not be nominated for any Academy Awards. It is not awards bait. It is, instead, an appealingly stripped-down action movie with a plot that suggests Larry Cohen at his most minimalist.

Gibson has directed a meat and potato thriller so passable yet forgettable that when my Lyft driver asked me what movie I’d just seen last night, it took me a minute or two for my brain to vomit up Flight Risk.

Topher Grace, the only That 70’s Show alum not under the sinister influence of Danny Masterson, stars as Winston, a mob accountant who agrees to snitch on his bosses.

Winston resembles Leo Getz, the iconically irritating witness Joe Pesci played in Lethal Weapon 2, 3, and 4.

He’s being transported by Madelyn Harris (Michelle Dockery), a no-nonsense, tough-as-nails U.S. Marshall with a lame, arbitrary backstory of failure under fire that leaves her with a burning need to prove herself.

Madelyn and Winston fly in a small aircraft with Daryl (Mark Wahlberg), a country-fried ham with the world’s saddest toupee and thickest, fakest Southern drawl. He’s a talker. He will not shut the fuck up despite Madelyn and Winston’s clear-cut disinterest in anything he has to say.

Daryl is ostentatiously friendly and overly ingratiating in ways that could not be more obnoxious or counter-productive. He’s the kind of narcissist who talks for the sake of talking and because he’s in love with the sound of his own voice and rancid sense of humor.

At first, the pilot without a filter or a sense of propriety is merely offensive on a conversational and personality level. Then Winston discovers that he is not what he appears to be.

The cocky pilot with a weakness for ribald patter shows clear signs of having survived a scuffle because he eliminated the real pilot so that he could take his place.

The creepy asshole constantly making leering, rapey comments toward Madelyn despite her clear disinterest/revulsion towards him turns out to be a hitman hired by a mob family to kill Winston before he can testify.

From the very beginning, there’s clearly something deeply wrong with Wahlberg’s character, whose appearance was modeled on that of Dennis Rader, the BTK Killer, who cultivated an image of normality in public and behaved with unfathomable perversity in private.

Despite being a veteran killer, it doesn’t take Madelyn long to restrain him. That, unfortunately, leaves a vacuum in the pilot department. This forces the Marshall to try to land the plane safely despite not knowing how to fly.

Madelyn has help from a flirtatious Indian gentleman who wants to help the freaked-out government agent survive her encounter with a paid killer and the elements so they can go on a date that night, and he can get laid.

He seems charming enough, but if I were Madelyn, I’d want to sleep for several days after a harrowing experience instead of going out immediately.

Flight Risk casts Wahlberg as a bad guy for the first time since 1996’s Fear. The burger chain proprietor has a ball overacting egregiously. He sucks up all of the oxygen in the film. The film’s primary appeal lies in seeing a popular hero over-act villainously.

At its best, Gibson’s watchable time-waster suggests an airborne version of the classic thriller Dead Calm, with a small plane standing in for the sinking ship.

Gibson may be an Academy Award-winning director of historical and religious epics, but Flight Risk is appealingly unpretentious. Its ambitions begin and end with engaging an audience for an hour and a half.

Flight Risk features Wahlberg as you’ve never seen him before and might never see him again. The actor’s inner ugliness oozes out, playing a career criminal who seems intent on committing a whole bunch of crimes onboard the plane beyond mere murder for hire.

This is a movie that fundamentally does not matter. It’s Redbox fodder in a post-Redbox world, as well as the latest forgettable collaboration between Gibson and his benefactor.

I enjoyed Flight Risk as cheesy pulp, but I almost forgot about it despite seeing it just last night.

There’s nothing in Flight Risk worth supporting someone like Gibson, who does a journeyman job but does not distinguish himself as a filmmaker or storyteller.

This is the kind of fluff you can consume mindlessly on Netflix while folding laundry or doing your taxes, or donating generously to Jewish and LGTBQ charities. That’s the ideal way to experience this, partly because it does not involve giving Mel Gibson your hard-earned cash for moderately engaging trash.

Two and a half stars out of five