Following up a pair of memorable turns in the drastically different Oppenheimer and Trap, Josh Hartnett continues to stretch his leading man range with the delightfully dopey action comedy Fight Or Flight. Sporting a bleached blonde do and a tight pink T-shirt, he plays Lucas Reyes, a gun-for-hire lying low in Bangkok until he gets a call from his former handler Katherine (Katee Sackhoff). She’s not thrilled to make the call and he’s even less excited about receiving it but with no viable options left, Katherine asks Reyes to board a flight that’s about to take off for San Francisco. On board is a rogue hacker known as The Ghost, in possession of an all-powerful supercomputer that can’t end up in the wrong hands. Reyes takes the mission with assurances from Katherine that completing it will expunge his checkered past but once he’s on the plane, it becomes obvious he’s not the only one after the target.
I was worried when Fight Or Flight began with one of those obnoxious cold opens that concludes with the dreaded “12 hours earlier…” card but once it hits cruising altitude, it becomes fun of the unfasten-your-brain’s-seatbelt variety. The film recalls numerous recent action extravaganzas, most specifically John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum and Bullet Train, although the setting is more confined than the former and less try-hard in its humor than the latter. It’s effectively an ultra-violent live-action cartoon, with Josh Hartnett in a Daffy Duck role where he doggedly pursues his goal through an onslaught of physical punishment. At 6′ 3″, Hartnett certainly has the frame to register as a threat for the endless barrage of assassins that stand in the way between him and The Ghost, so much so that it’s a bit surprising he hasn’t starred in this kind of fight-frenzied actioner before.
Of course it makes no sense that a passenger airplane would stay airborne once fights between trained killers broke out, a plot wrinkle that Fight Or Flight barely tries to smooth over. Similarly, the jumbo jet in which the majority of the movie takes place is an impossibly large double-decker that would likely never make it off the ground in the first place. Fortunately for us aground in the audience, we get to observe close-quarters combat in first class, coach, cargo, a luxury restroom with a shower and basically every location that could exist on a plane. James Madigan, making his lead directing debut here after working second-unit on several action projects, also makes clever use of innocuous in-flight accoutrements as deadly props when wielded by assassins. Seatbelt strangulations and service cart stampedes are but a small sampling of the acts that willfully ignore the teachings of the pre-flight safety demonstration.
Fight Or Flight makes some bone-headed mistakes comedically — the aforementioned opener is set ironically to the immensely predictable “The Blue Danube” waltz — but finds its place in between the melee. The jokes are based more around minutia and mannerisms rather than manners mitigating machismo, as we tend to see in other action comedies where two people are duking it out and they have to pause in the presence of bystanders. It’s not that the humor is necessarily more sophisticated but it’s trying to riff on slightly more unique story beats as opposed to recycling tropes. The film is packed with all types of hitmen and hitwomen who bring their own color to the palette but wisely doesn’t try to make every one of them funny. Among the henchmen and henchwomen, Hartnett undeniably remains the star.
Not that it shares much in common with Nicolas Cage-starring airplane-set movies like Con Air or Left Behind but I did detect a bit of Cage’s influence on Hartnett’s performance here. He’s a good enough actor for you to buy him not only as a burnt-out mercenary but also as a wide-eyed patsy, comically overwhelmed by the odds against which he finds himself. There are cackles and guffaws he throws in sparingly that are calibrated right to Nic pitch, as is the “x” sound he holds onto at the end of the phrase “kill box” late in the film. Fight Or Flight concludes with an overly optimistic pitch for a sequel that doesn’t seem likely to get cleared for takeoff but as a chaotic one-way trip, it’s worth booking a ticket.
Score – 3/5
New movies coming this weekend:
Coming to theaters is Final Destination: Bloodlines, a supernatural horror sequel starring Kaitlyn Santa Juana and Teo Briones, following a college student plagued by a recurring violent nightmare who returns home to save her family from the horrific fate that inevitably awaits them.
Also playing only in theaters is Hurry Up Tomorrow, a psychological thriller starring Abel Tesfaye and Jenna Ortega, wherein an insomniac musician encounters a mysterious stranger, leading to a journey that challenges everything he knows about himself.
Streaming on Apple TV+ is Deaf President Now!, a documentary which recounts the 1988 protests at the all-deaf Gallaudet University, after the school’s board of trustees appointed a hearing president over several qualified deaf candidates.