Fight or Flight

Lucas (Josh Hartnett) tries to survive a bunch of killers on an airplane in Fight or Flight (Distributed by Vertical Entertainment)

Fight or Flight is an over-the-top action movie about a washed-up agent turned alcoholic-in-hiding who is tasked with finding a terrorist on a flight full of assassins and bringing them to the ground safely. Check that: it is a way, way, way over-the-top, violent and disarmingly hilarious action movie with that basic plot. It knows how ridiculous it is, leaning into it from the start and constantly raising the stakes, with wild action resulting in some great, bloody, punchlines. The story itself undoubtedly sounds familiar, yet the filmmakers turn everything up approximately a thousand notches, getting creative with the close-quarters combat and bringing out a tremendously entertaining performance from star Josh Hartnett. This silly thrill-ride is much more fun than it has any right to be.

Lucas is living unhappily in Bangkok, moping around and slowly drinking himself to death. One day, his hated ex calls him. She will pull him out of exile if he boards a plane to San Francisco, finds a target known as The Ghost, whose identity is a mystery, and bring them in unharmed. Reluctantly, Lucas agrees, only to find out (the hard way) that The Ghost’s whereabouts have been leaked on the dark web and the plane is full of brutal killers seeking to collect a $10 million bounty. Can he find his mark and protect them throughout the sixteen-hour flight?

The elevator pitch for Fight or Flight (97 minutes, without the end credits), would be something like Bullet Train, but on an airplane. They are both action-packed and darkly comedic, with similar concepts. While Bullet Train has the bigger stars, Fight or Flight is a lot funnier. Though it does pay more attention to its plot than it should (it grinds to a halt whenever it leaves the plane to deal with Lucas’ ex trying to figure out what is going on), when it focuses on Hartnett fighting his way through gangsters and hitmen to complete his strange assignment, it is absolutely the more enjoyable of the two. It is so committed to its absurdity that you can’t help but laugh even as characters get stabbed, shot, impaled or are attacked with a chainsaw.

Hartnett brings it in every scene as a guy who had totally given up on any hope of being a free man again. Now he has a chance, provided to him by the person he trusts the least, and all he has to do is run a gauntlet of unrepentant killers to find a shadowy criminal who has kept themselves unidentifiable while causing chaos around the world. Though he is resigned to an unfortunate fate, his survival instincts kick in, sometimes unexpectedly. Hartnett plays Lucas like he’s in a story that makes sense. That makes it all the more amusing when he gives in to the carnage near the end, leading to an epically gory fight down an aisle that made me laugh harder than anything I’ve seen at the movies so far this year.

Fight or Flight is derivative, has an uninteresting plot and doesn’t conclude so much as stop abruptly. Yet the action is so gleefully dumb and Hartnett is clearly having such a great time, that I couldn’t prevent myself from smiling most of the way. It is the perfect sort of movie to put on when you need a diversion and aren’t in the mood for anything remotely deep. If you can imagine yourself laughing at someone getting a chainsaw thrown at their head, I definitely recommend checking this out.

3½ out of 5

Cast:

Josh Hartnett as Lucas Reyes

Charithra Chandran as Isha

Katee Sackhoff as Katherine Brunt

Julian Kostov as Aaron Hunter

Directed by James Madigan

Written by Brooks McLaren and D.J. Cotrona