The Accountant meets Plane in this Mel Gibson-directed thriller about an accountant on a plane.

In a rare title role, Topher Grace is Flight Risk AKA Winston, an accountant turned informant being transported by a US Marshal (Michelle Dockery) to testify against his mob boss. In the grand tradition of plane-based assassination movies Red Eye and Snakes on a Plane, the pilot (Mark Wahlberg) hired to fly them turns out to be a far less charming version of Cillian Murphy or 450 snakes.

The marketing for Flight Risk excluded all mention of Mel Gibson, which suggests the Oscar-winning director is no longer a selling point, and makes you question why he was hired if the studio was not prepared to advertise his involvement. The list of (presumably cheaper) journeymen directors who could have helmed this action B-movie must be as long as the controversies section on Gibson’s wikipedia.

Maybe they thought he could elevate the horrendous script, injecting some Wes Craven-style suspense into proceedings à la Red Eye. After all, Gibson managed to maintain a high standard as a director during the ongoing depreciation of his public image and acting credits. But Flight Risk is notable only for completing his fall from Topher grace, the toxic fumes of a film career going down in flames.

The nonsensical plot makes Airplane! look like a documentary, from the US Government’s lack of background checks, to the assassin wearing a toupée disguise and doing a fake accent even though his passengers don’t know what the original pilot looks or sounds like. Of course this is a genre where plot holes are part of the fun (you could even argue Snakes on a Plane doesn’t make sense), but Flight Risk has all the entertainment value of a 90-minute tarmac delay.

In fact the only evidence of Gibson’s involvement is the film’s obsession with rape, another subject you might recognise from one of his misogynistic and racist rants now bleeding into his filmmaking (see also The Passion of the Christ – except don’t). Wahlberg’s character is a sadistic rapist, presumably in efforts to add jeopardy in the absence of any tension. But due to the failings of Gibson’s direction and Jared Rosenberg’s script, Wahlberg spends most of the movie tied up at the back of the plane, as the film descends into watching an incompetent agent on the phone to a comedy ethnic character while Marky Mark threatens to rape her for 90 minutes.

Flight Risk may not be the worst thing Gibson has done; it may not even be the worst thing he’s filmed. But it is surely the worst thing he’s released in cinemas.