Film Review: FIGHT OR FLIGHT (2024): Josh Hartnett Stars in a Wild but Often Mindless Movie That Could Please Action Fans
Fight or Flight Review
Fight or Flight (2024) Film Review, a movie directed by James Madigan, written by Brooks McLaren and D.J. Cotrona and starring Josh Hartnett, Charithra Chandran, Katee Sackhoff, Julian Kostov, Marko Zaror, JuJu Chan Szeto, Danny Ashok, Hughie O’Donnell, Jyuddah Jaymes, Willem Van Der Vegt, Sanjeev Kohli, Sarah Lam, Iren Bordan, Attila Arpa, Nora Trokan and Katrina Anne Ward.
Director James Madigan’s Fight or Flight is certainly offering viewers a lot of fun with its wild and crazy plot development, but the movie’s story line feels half-baked at times and the film only exists for its off-the-wall set pieces which are, I suppose, impressive in some strange sort of way. Josh Hartnett stars in the new action picture as a mercenary named Lucas Reyes who is hired by his old girlfriend, a higher up named Katherine Brunt (Katee Sackhoff), to find a mysterious character known as “Ghost,” who has boarded a plane with some high-tech gadget that is certain to rock the boat if Brunt and her people don’t get their hands on it immediately. A fake passport is designed for the troubled Lucas to board a plane on which all hell is about to break loose in a well-paced thrill ride that sporadically satisfies but ultimately feels like overkill in the end.
Lucas first must encounter a man named Cayenne (a menacing Marko Zaror) who ends up spiking Lucas’s drink with enough something or other to put down a horse, but somehow Lucas manages to overcome this baddie by hitting the top of his head against a hook on the ceiling in the airplane bathroom and killing him. This film proceeds to spend moments with Lucas trying to clean off the blood and dispose of Cayenne’s body above the bathroom as the security on the plane knocks on the door while trying to get into the lavatory.
The “Ghost” that Lucas is looking for is soon revealed, but I certainly won’t tell you who it is in this review. That’s because if you know who it is, the movie ends up feeling like a cheat. This picture wants to have its cake and eat it too by making Lucas join forces with the Ghost in an effort to take down the passengers on the plane who are out to get them. Lucas and the Ghost must also evade the vicious Aaron (Julian Kostov) who works alongside Katherine on land.
An airplane employee named Isha (Charithra Chandran) reluctantly tolerates Lucas’ wild behavior, but also starts to see the clearer picture as the movie’s secrets are unveiled one at a time. This film ends up moving into something like the fight scenes in Everything Everywhere All at Once meet the train scenes from Bullet Train. Both those movies are wonderful and Fight or Flight is, quite frankly, not. It’s too bloody, too sloppy and too “anything goes” to actually achieve the wild insanity it sets out to successfully capture during the concluding scenes.
Josh Hartnett follows up a good turn from last year’s serial killer movie, Trap, with an average performance in Fight or Flight. Hartnett’s one saving grace here is his facial expressions which are humorous at times and help to move the weird plot forward in an efficient manner. I can admire what the new picture is trying to do, especially when it unleashes memorable characters like Master Lian (JuJu Chan Szeto) and Cat Eyes (Nora Trokan), but those secondary actresses are grossly underutilized, unfortunately, and bite the dust rather quickly in the grand scheme of things.
Charithra Chandran’s character feels like a love interest for Lucas though the movie is too busy keeping the action pumping to actually develop any kind of romance within the picture’s story. That’s OK, but if you’re going to make a movie this unrealistic, why not throw in some romance to offset the violence? It would also give the movie more of a focus and make one understand the dynamic of the two central characters of the movie.
Still, Fight or Flight is competently choreographed where the action scenes are concerned. As stylized as it is, it’s hard to buy the scene where the plane has wind blowing characters around due to a big opening on it. This movie doesn’t lack entertainment value although it certainly could use either a dose of common sense or more absurdity earlier on. When the wild scenes arrive, they feel like they come from a different movie altogether thus making the film feel uneven.
However, Fight or Flight could well please fans of offbeat action who like their movies to have a true sense of urgency which this film’s plot does feel it possesses overall. I enjoyed watching it but could see the holes in the story line from a mile away. This movie also leaves the doors wide open for a sequel in case it does well at the box-office.
Rating: 6.5/10
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