Mel Gibson Returns as a Director with ‘Flight Risk’

The movie trailer hit heavy rotation on N.F.L. playoff broadcasts and elsewhere earlier this month. A pilot played by Mark Wahlberg is flying a federal agent and a government witness in a tiny airplane. But the pilot, it seems, is actually a hit man sent to kill the witness. Chaos ensues.

“You don’t watch it,” the trailer promises in all capital letters. “You experience it.”

None of the actors, including Wahlberg, are identified by name — the agent is played by Michelle Dockery (“Downton Abbey”), the witness by Topher Grace (“That ’70s Show”) — and the filmmaker is alluded to simply as “the acclaimed director of ‘Braveheart,’ ‘Hacksaw Ridge’ and ‘Apocalypto.’”

The movie poster is similar: Wahlberg’s is the only name in large type; the top promises, “From the award-winning director” of those three films; and only at the bottom, in far smaller type, is the director’s name: Mel Gibson.

Gibson — who won the directing Oscar for “Braveheart” and was nominated for “Hacksaw Ridge” — was also of course once one of Hollywood’s most bankable actors. He is also the same person who in 2006 made antisemitic statements to a police officer who had pulled him over for speeding (Gibson pleaded no contest to drunken driving and apologized for the statements), was heard on tapes leaked in 2010 shouting racist remarks at his then-girlfriend and this past fall stated that Kamala Harris has “the I.Q. of a fence post.”