Movie: Flight Risk

This Review Reveals Minor Details About the Plot.

The Cat Smells a Rat

Plot Overview

Nursery rhyme investigator Katherine Thomas in her Fore­word quotes Henry Betts in the Intro to his Nursery Rhymes and Tales (Methuen & Co., Ltd., London, 1924): “They are to be found all over Europe and they have analogies among uncivilized peoples all over the world. It appeared, also, that many of them are of incredible antiquity, bearing unmistakable traces of origin in prehistoric times.” The movie “Flight Risk” follows the archetype:

Hey diddle, diddle, The cat and the fiddle, The cow jumpt over the moon; The little dog laughed To see such sport, And the dish ran away with the spoon.

“Hey diddle, diddle is an exceedingly ancient refrain” (Thomas 136)

“Queen Elizabeth, thus gaily dancing into the lime­light of to-day, was familiarly dubbed ‘the Cat’” (Thomas 137). At age 16 she danced at a concert in London. “At the supposedly sedate age of forty-eight, ‘the Cat’ was frequently to be caught sight of in her apartments spiritedly dancing to the music of her beloved fiddle” (Thomas 138).

In the backstory of “Flight Risk,” seven-year veteran U.S. Marshal Madolyn Harris (Michelle Dockery) was sit­ting on her charge Maria for three days in a hotel room when the poor girl wanted to take a shower … a shower in privacy. This was contrary to protocol, but Madolyn did a little dance to accom­modate her. She checked that the bath­room was secure. Then she cuffed Maria to the shower stall and left and closed the door. When the hotel was fire bombed, Madolyn forgot Maria and fled. The service deemed her unreliable and assigned her desk duty.

After two years a conveniently available Madolyn is put back into the field to escort a distant mob witness to a pending court date. I'm not sure what all the protocols are, but through­out the movie the way she fiddles with shackling & unshackling a witness & a hit-man in confined spaces resembles more some catty dance we're treated to. The land­mark wreck they spot on the way was named Fair Dancer.

“The cow jumping over the moon, like other lines of the jingle, holds a dual import as a bit of pleasantry, aimed at the elaborate charades for which Elizabeth … made the head­quarters at White­hall and Hampton Court famous” (Thomas 139). “Elizabeth her­self has written in a command to Burleigh and Walsingham in relation to their journey … to Fotheringay Castle, wherein Mary of Scotland was confined,” (Thomas 138) to make inquiries. “Davison … is especially commanded by her Majesty to signify to them both ‘how her Spirit and her Moon do find them­selves’” (Life of Davison, Sir Harry Nicholas, Bodleian Library.)

In this movie the coward is mob accountant Winston (Topher Grace) who's holed up in a cabin in the Alaskan wilderness but makes a deal with the feds to testify when they bring him back to New York. His trip way up there and back is this cow jumping over the moon.

“The sports at which ‘the little dog laughed’ were, in addition to the political ones, the gorgeous tournaments held in the tilt-yard of White­hall when the frolic­some­ness of the court convulsed the nation over the antics thus performed with grotesque gravity” (Thomas 140).

Here “the little dog laugh[ing] to see such sport” is the secretly substituted pilot Daryl Booth (Mark Wahlberg) with his macabre humor that doesn't let up. When his captive expresses fear that he might be dumped some­where to be eaten by wolves, the sky jockey reassures them he's going to let them off where they'll just be eaten by bears.

“Queen Elizabeth taking stringent precautions against any attempt to poison the sovereign insisted on having her meals served with a taster, [called] ‘the Spoon’, always a beautiful young woman of the court. ‘The Dish’ was the formal title of the courtier detailed to carry certain golden dishes into the state dining-room. ¶“The particular Dish and Spoon whose running away has been thus forever commemorated were undoubtedly Edward Earl of Hertford and Lady Katherine Grey. This couple having contracted a secret marriage—” (Thomas 140–1).

In our movie Madolyn became the unqualified pilot in a pinch, and by sat phone Hasan (Monib Abhat, voiced by Maaz Ali) was a real pilot tasked with talking her down. It would take the cooperative effort of the two of them but only Madolyn (the spoon) was in danger, not Hasan (the dish.) Their off-and-on phone conver­sation is punctuated by Hasan hitting on her to agree to a dinner date once she landed.

Ideology

The police action lends itself to comparison with one of Kenny Rogers's songs concerning a chance encounter with “The Gambler” on a train bound for nowhere. He offered his fellow passenger the advice that “the secret to surviving is knowing what to throw away and knowing what to keep.” The refrain of the song goes:

You've got to know when to hold 'em, Know when to fold 'em, Know when to walk away, Know when to run. You never count your money when you're sittin' at the table. There'll be time enough for countin' when the dealin's done.

This wisdom of the gambling man's repertoire is old as the hills and was passed on by a raconteur, Agur in Proverbs 30:1, whose four meta­phors offered the same life advice as did Rogers's Gambler. That we find in, (Prov. 30:29-31) “There be three things which go well, yea, four are comely in going: A lion which is strongest among beasts, and turneth not away for any; A grey­hound; an he goat also; and a king, against whom there is no rising up.”

We have Agur's “lion which is strongest among beasts, and turneth not away for any,” and we have Rogers's “know[ing] when to hold 'em.” When Winston is bleeding out and Madolyn wants to increase speed to get him to a hospital faster, Hasan advises against it in order to conserve fuel. When the Marshal insists, Hasan concedes, “You're the captain.”

We have Agur's “king, against whom there is no rising up,” and we have Rogers's “Know[ing] when to fold 'em.” A king who knows when to give in to his subjects doesn't experience any uprising. When she's got the plane going in the right direction, she puts in on autopilot to let it fly itself.

We have Agur's “he goat also” and we have Rogers's “Know[ing] when to walk away.” When a moose comes knocking on Winston's window, he checks it out but walks back to his seat seeing the creature's rack is too big to squeeze inside. Like­wise, a bird strike only causes them to climb above the fowls' flight zone.

We have Agur's “greyhound” and Rogers's “Know[ing] when to run.” When the plane is about to fly into a mountain, Madolyn has to take evasive action and gun it. Like­wise, they may need all of the runway for her first landing ever, albeit in a light plane.

The gambler gave the advice:

You never count your money when you're sittin' at the table.
There'll be time enough for countin' when the dealin's done.

Even if she lands safely on the ground, the mob still has a long reach.

Production Values

“” (2025) was directed by Mel Gibson. It was written by Jared Rosen­berg. It stars Michelle Dockery, Mark Wahlberg and Topher Grace, and also Eilise Guil­foyle as Janine on the tele­phone. They worked well together for an enter­taining experience from a sparse script. Dockery out­right resembled a cat when shot from the front through the plane's wind­shield, the way her face was framed w/black hair & grey cans on her ears.

MPA rated it R for violence and language. The editing was good to bring it in at a surprisingly short 1½ hours. The flight danger scenes were the best. The on-board villain was the creepiest. The Marshals were a suspicious lot as written.

Review Conclusion w/a Christian's Recommendation

Alaska is a pretty godforsaken place, so Winston may be thought of as running from God as Jonah did. They both had a whale of a ride, and they were expected to sing in the end.

This was a very good action cum drama, popcorn film, well worth the viewing.

Movie Ratings

Action factor: Edge of your seat action. Suitability For Children: Not Suitable for Children of Any Age. Special effects: Amazing special effects. Video Occasion: Fit For a Friday Evening. Suspense: Keeps you on the edge of your seat. Overall movie rating: Four stars out of five.

Works Cited

Scripture is quoted from the King James Version. Pub. 1611, rev, 1769. Software.

Lions den picture is copyright © Sweet Publishing. Licensed by FreeBibleimages. That work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Rogers, Kenny. Songwriter Don Schlitz. “The Gambler.” Lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Pub. LLC. Web.

Thomas, Katherine. The Real Personages of Mother Goose. Copyright, 1930, by Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Co. Copyright in Great Britain, the British Dominions and Possessions. Boston: Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Co. Print.

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