If Josh Hartnett appears like he missed out on the Crank-style motion films of the late 2000s, Fight or Flight provides him the unusual alternative to circle again. Arguably Hartnett’s first film as an motion lead, Fight or Flight is within the custom of winkingly over-the-top workout routines like Shoot ‘Em Up and Drive Angry that make some extent to enjoy their very own violent ridiculousness. With the novelty of these quais-trangressions lengthy since worn off, nevertheless, this method wants greater than pure angle to essentially succeed.
Fight or Flight is self-consciously edgy even earlier than it will get into any precise mayhem. It opens with the profane control-room panic of steely company agent Aaron Hunter (Julian Kostov) and his steelier boss Katherine Brunt (Katee Sackhoff) as they understand {that a} tech-savvy fugitive nicknamed the Ghost has nabbed an omnipotent digital machine (sure, a kind of) and is about to fly from Bangkok to San Francisco. Everything Brunt and Hunter say to one another is pure movie-world stupidity, directed by James Madigan with the obvious hope that coaxing the actors to learn each line with as a lot brusque, managed fury as attainable will improve the urgency. These are the sort of dangerous control-room scenes viewers tolerate to get to the implied promise of onscreen havoc, and Katherine appears able to ship: Desperate and missing operatives on the bottom to achieve the aircraft in time, she calls in disgraced former agent Lucas Reyes (Hartnett) – the one man left for the job! (Liam Neeson should’ve been unavailable.)
Because a lot of Fight or Flight proceeds in suits and begins, it takes some time to appreciate that Hartnett’s important job is stringing the film alongside, doing his greatest to legitimize a cutely ridiculous premise that mutates into an much more outlandish one. First, Lucas is tasked with boarding the aircraft, determining who the Ghost is in the course of the flight, and bringing them into custody alive once they land. But it seems others have discovered that the Ghost is on this flight, too, and aren’t so eager on conserving their goal alive, which suggests Lucas has to struggle off a aircraft’s price of attackers, assassins, and mercenaries after he’s unmasked the Ghost.
That Hartnett is ready to even take this materials midway is a big credit score to his re-ascendant star. Imagine, previous to the releases of Trap and Oppenheimer, watching an motion film the place the saving grace, classiest aspect, and battered soul are all the previous heartthrob of The Faculty and Pearl Harbor fame. Visibly doing a lot of his personal stunts, Hartnett’s efficiency is extra bodily and fewer psychological than his exemplary work as M. Night Shyamalan’s serial-killer-disguised-as-doting-dad; at his core, Lucas Reyes is extra like a skinny character out of Bullet Train, the David Leitch beat-’em-up that this film continuously recollects.
To Madigan’s credit score, the craziest motion in Fight or Flight goes quite a bit more durable than Bullet Train. There are a strong quarter-hour or so the place sheer tripped-out cartoon insanity takes over, piling on the unlikely additions – hallucinations, a chainsaw – with glee. But that’s not a lot of the film, and the director struggles to coherently convey what, precisely, is occurring in between these all-in melees. For instance, a while is taken to level out that not less than a couple of individuals on the manifest actually are regular civilians. But reasonably than up the stakes, this solely serves to make Fight or Flight appear careless about what truly occurs to the passengers who don’t should die. Whatever their edgelord tendencies, Crank and Shoot ‘Em Up are much less haphazard about navigating that line between foolish provocation and full disregard for collateral injury, whereas much less amped films like Neeson’s Non-Stop do a greater job of constructing towards pulpy pandemonium.
In the top, Fight or Flight isn’t even actually attention-grabbing sufficient to be genuinely nihilistic. It’s simply one other uneven motion train, proudly saying nothing about its ill-defined characters. (The solely character aside from Lucas who isn’t a visible gimmick or a one-note caricature is the flight attendant performed by Charithra Chandran.) It zaps to life for a few struggle sequences and turns into robotically dreadful within the many pointless control-room scenes. Back in 2008 or so, this may need been Josh Hartnett’s greatest starring automobile in ages. Congratulations are so that by 2025, he clearly deserves one thing higher.
