Kermode & Mayo’s Take - Flight Risk embargo special - they tried to stop us...

Episode Date: January 24, 2025

Coming hot off the podcast press, we’ve got Mark’s review of ‘Flight Risk’ - under embargo until now. The Mel Gibson directed thriller sees a US Marshal escort a government witness via plane across the Alaskan wilderness to testify against a mob boss in Manhattan. Mark Wahlberg’s pilot is in charge of their safe passage, but things get turbulent when it turns out not everyone is who they seem to be. Don’t miss Mark’s verdict in this embargo special... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This episode is brought to you by MUBI, a curated streaming service dedicated to elevating great cinema. MUBI is the place to discover ambitious films by visionary filmmakers, all carefully handpicked, so you can explore the best of cinema streaming anytime, anywhere. Mark, what can people discover on MUBI this month? So we have The Girl with the Needle, which was nominated for Best International Film at the Golden Globes, which is an absolutely chilling based on a true story by Magnus von Horn. We reviewed it here on the show,

we talked about how it looked extraordinary. It was really, really disturbing, really, really got under my skin. There's also the first films first collection, which is now streaming on movie, which includes things like hunger, the debut feature from Steve McQueen with a standout performance by Michael Fassbender

and also Pepe Lucy Bum, which is the debut feature from Pedro Almodovar and is an absolutely anarchic riot. You can try MUBI free for 30 days at MUBI.com slash'clock in the evening. It's Thursday the 23rd of January. Hello, good evening, Mark. Now this is the time, the hallowed time for Japanese whiskey and discussing life and heavyweight themes. What we're doing is we are adding this as a special bonus. It's our first embargo special. Explain where we are. First of all, maybe a lot of people don't know how the embargo system works. Do that first of all. Okay. What happens with most films is that they show them to the critics in advance, and then the critics review the films. Because the film company has shown you the film, they are allowed to embargo your review to say, well, you can't review it until this point.

Usually, for a week of release films, we get shown the films on Monday and Tuesday, and sometimes there'll be an embargo until, you know, Wednesday morning because they want the reviews to be close to the release date so that the film is being talked about as it's in cinemas. Sometimes they simply don't show you the films at all because they think that critics won't like them and therefore it won't help. But there is a sort of midway point between this, which is showing the film to critics, but embargoing it. So their reviews are so late in the day that effectively the film hasn't been reviewed.

And in the case of the new Mel Gibson film, Flight Risk, that is the case. We're actually recording this on Wednesday morning at nine o'clock. I saw this film a couple of days ago. I've just said it's Thursday, 11 o'clock in the evening. I know, but we're actually recording it now because you can't hear it until now because of the embargo. So when I went into the screen-

For the sake of radio drama, it's more exciting if we pretend that we're adding this on Thursday night. But in the pursuit of honesty and truth and openness, we should say that that's the case. So the key thing is- That's so last year. The key thing is that embargoes are fine. Of course, if the film company doesn't want to show you the film, that's fine. That's their prerogative. If you see it in a paid cinema, it's up to you what you say about it when you say it. But as far as this is concerned, it's usually, if a film is embargoed until the very last

minute before it opens, it's one of two reasons. One of them is, you know, it's James Bond and they don't show it to you until just before because, you know, they don't want any leaks about what's going on, particularly in the case of the last bond. And the other is that they don't think you're going to like it. And therefore, they would like to keep your opinions away from any potential paying punters until the last possible moment. In this case, 11pm on Thursday. But hey, who knows? Flight risk may go either way. You can't judge a film on the basis of an embargo, but that's why you're not hearing this review until earliest 11pm Thursday. You may be picking this up first thing Friday morning, in which case the film's in cinemas

already. Right. So before you go into some detail and we play a clip and so on, maybe it would help if I just gave you some etymology about the word embargo. Oh, please do. Which means an order forbidding ships from certain other nations from entering or leaving a nation's port, from the Spanish embargo meaning seizure or arrest. With that in mind. It's a naval term. It's a naval term and people get arrested because of this. So that's what it is. So maybe there'll be further arrests once Marcus finished eviscerating. Well, you don't know that, Simon. You don't know that. Maybe it's a masterpiece. Okay.

So the first thing to say is that when I saw this film I knew nothing about it at all. I didn't know who it was directed by until at the very end it said directed by Mel Gibson. Now of course this is important because as you probably know that Mel Gibson along with John Voight and Sylvester Stallone was recently named a special White House ambassador to Hollywood as As the orange guy said, it is my honor to announce John Voight, Mel Gibson, and Sylvester Stallone to be special ambassadors to a great but very troubled place, Hollywood, California. He went on to say, they will serve as special envoys to me for the purpose of bringing Hollywood, which has lost much business over the last four years to foreign countries, back bigger, better, and stronger than ever before." So basically, Trump has sent his spies into Hollywood to bring it back bigger and better.

And Gibson responded by saying, I heed the call. My duty as a citizen is to give and help and give help and insight that I can." So essentially, Mel is a public servant. He's a public servant at large in Hollywood, and he is helping to make everything bigger and better. So here is the first movie out of the trap since all that happened. And the first thing to say about it is it's a complete con. The poster sells it as a Mark Wahlberg film.

His is the only face on the poster. In fact, of the three main actors, he is the one with the least to do. He spends large amounts of the drama unconscious. He is the third banana in an action adventure starring Michelle Dockery and Topher Grace. He is at best and Mark Wahlberg, but in this particular case, he is but Mark Wahlberg. So, Michelle Dockery is deputy US Marshal Madeline Harris. Topher Grace is Winston.

He's an accountant with sort of mob connections whom Dockery tracks down in Alaska. And she arrests him, then he cuts a deal. He'll turn state witness in return for some preferential treatment, but she's got to get him into the big smoke, the big city, very, very fast. She has to do it by Monday morning because she needs him to testify against this big crim who otherwise is going to get away. In order to do this, they have a jaunt in a rickety private plane piloted by celebrated Christian and all-around top man Marky Mark Wahlberg. Here's a clip from the trailer. Deputy Harris, poppy light flying. You've paid for it.

I never flew U.S. Marshal before. Why is he all chained up? I'm gonna get him to New York so we can testify against the Moretti crime family. Okay, hey, you're the boss. Is it always this bumpy? No number of passengers left their lunch up here. I can open a snack bar. You heard in the background the re-imagined sounds of Psycho Killer, Keska Say, or in this case, Psycho Killer WTF.

So it's revealed very early on that Marky Mark's character is bald. And apparently, and I only know this from news stories that I've looked up subsequently, apparently he didn't want to wear a bald cap. He wanted to actually have his head shaved to be bald, which is ironic because it looks exactly like he's wearing a bald cap. I mean, he literally looks like Bobo the Clown. It could not look worse if they had slapped a big condom on his head and then painted it brown. It is the worst, most unconvincing baldness I have ever seen.

And the fact that apparently he really did shave his head so he really doesn't have hair and it really isn't a bald cap is genuinely astonishing. So even the baldness is badly done. Anyway, once they're up in the air, it turns out that Marky Marky's not quite what he seems. One thing he's bald, that was under a cap, but the other thing is, you know, oh, there's something sinister going on. Now, this isn't a plot spoiler because you know this from the poster. The poster is just a picture of Marky Mark looking sinister, looking evil, looking like Psycho Killer, Keskase, which they play in the trailer.

So three people in a plane, all of them are odds, US Marshal, Arrested Crime, bold Mark Wahlberg, Psycho Killer playing everything. So this was based on a script by Jared Rosenberg. And the script was on this thing that we've talked about quite a lot, the Blacklist. The Blacklist is basically a list of the best unproduced screenplays. And it's quite often gives you, you know, remarkable films,

people go to the blacklist and they say, why hasn't this been made? And something will come and then it will get made into a, you know, into a great film. I cannot imagine how this script was on the blacklist unless either Mel Gibson in directing it has completely rewritten it, or it's demonstration that even Shakespeare can be performed extremely badly. Because no matter what it may have said or looked like on the page, on the screen, it is catastrophically bad.

None of it rings true, none of it makes any sense, none of it has any interest, and almost none of it rings true, none of it makes any sense, none of it has any interest, and almost none of it has any tension. Firstly, it is tonally all over the place. Topher Grace is doing jokey cheeky bits, Dockery is doing serious, serious crime mystery stuff, and then Warburg is just, in the words of Wythnell and I, he's coming on all bald men doing that sort of psycho gibbering babble about how much he wants to eat everyone's face. And so according to him, there was a quote from Mel Gibson, he said, Mark Walberg improvised

much of his character's dialogue. And Gibson said, Mark's got a dark side. He takes stuff from every now and and again he'd let it out. And I can't even repeat some of the stuff he'd say. In fact, we had to cut most of it out. It was like really sick, but we hinted it. Hollywood's top Christians, hooray. So to make it worse, there is a preposterous second level story happening on the radio because they're in radio contact with people on the ground, which is all about sinister FBI double-crossing. So again, of course, Gibson, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, this is deep state corruption. So that is meant to be like this kind

of twisty, twisty mystery, but it's kind of just, oh for heaven's sake, stop this bumfoolery. It's just preposterous. So this being Gibson, remember Gibson, of course, made Passion of the Christ, currently working on Passion of the Christ to the Resurrection. Is that a joke? No. No, that's what he's doing. He's actually doing it. Oh my goodness me. Yeah, because there's a twist. There's a twist, you see. He's not dead.

He's not dead. Passion of the Christ to the resurrection, this time it's personal. So, yeah, basically the way that Mel expresses his strong moral code is he makes violent movies that have got lots of stabby, stabby stabbings and lots of wintsy finger breakings. In this case, the entire back of somebody's hand being torn off in close up because, you know, good wholesome entertainment that's going to make Hollywood bigger, better, stronger, and you know, all endorsed by Manga Mussolini in his quest to make America great again. Now don't get me wrong, I like senseless gore, okay? I'm a fan of senseless gore. In fact, one of the things I liked about The Passion of the Christ is it is one of the goriest

gore movies I have ever seen. I mean, I've seen the Texas Chainsaw Massacre and I've seen Cannibal Holocaust. And The Passion of the Christ is one of the nastiest, most sort of, you know, sadistically violent films ever as Peter Bradshaw once rather brilliantly said of the crucifixion in The Passion of the Christ. He's not just crucified, he's more

crucified than anyone has ever been crucified before, whilst the two thieves, either side of him, appear to be enduring crucifixion-like. Now, I like senseless gore, but if I'm going to have it, I would rather have the kind of unapologetic, enjoyably trashy, senseless gore of Draggsgaust concrete than this. And of course, also this is a 15 certificate. So it's kind of having its cake and eating it. It's not giving you full on disemboweling. It's just giving you the wintzy side of somebody having the back of their hand pulled off.

What's most remarkable about this is that Gibson, who is a director of some note, I mean, he made the incredibly visceral, pardon me, apocalypto, which I think is, you know, it's a film, it's like a whole film is a chase sequence and it's incredibly propulsive. It's astonishing that Mel Gibson could have made a film this dull.

For all the violence, for all the tension, for all the up in the air action, for all the comedic baldness, it never gets off the dramatic starting blocks. I mean, Tofa Grace, Michelle Dockery, they're unremarkable. Wahlberg is the worst he has ever been. And I mean, I find this hard to say because I used to love Mark Wahlberg. I absolutely loved him in Boogie Nights, for which he's apologized incidentally. But you know, the daddy's homes and all the rubbish that he's done. This is the worst performance he has ever done.

And it's also one of those things about, in this movie, the very best performance of anyone on screen is someone who isn't on screen. Like for most of the movie, there is a voice of someone who is not on screen, and that person acts everyone on screen off the screen. So I understand why they don't want the reviews to drop until late. And I, again, in the pursuit of honesty and truthfulness, a couple of my colleagues when we came out of the screening said, oh, I quite enjoyed that,

thought it was all right. And I was looking at them like, are you crazy? That's one of the worst films I've ever seen. But so as as I said, you know, truth and honesty, a couple of my colleagues thought it was great. They're wrong. It is a terrible film. It is an absolutely terrible film, really badly directed by somebody who we know can direct and who has been endorsed by the White House to officially go and make Hollywood bigger, better and all the rest of it, which actually means go spy on those commies and tell me what they're doing. So, welcome to four years of hell. If that went on the poster, that would actually work, wouldn't it? That would actually be quite welcoming. I add this for no reason at all, but Stephen Bush in the Financial Times, although I think he was on social media,

he was wondering at what stage American Christianity becomes designated as an entirely different faith. Completely unmoored from everything else that's happening around the world, but that an American Christian is kind of different to any other type of Christian. I know that doesn't work. But anyway, he was just ruminating. I just thought it was an interesting subject. Yeah. I mean, you know, it was in the words of new model army, worshipping the devil in the name of God. Off you go.