The batty and hyperactive action comedy Fight or Flight lands somewhere between homage and parody. Derivative of the likes of every John Wick and Die Hard clone to come out of the woodwork for the past thirty-five years, Fight or Flight can trace its roots and influences without much mystery. Thankfully, it’s also self-aware and amusing enough to not put up a front. Instead of approaching a story that audiences have seen before with a sort of sour faced seriousness, first time director James Madigan approaches things with a light heart, buckets of blood, over-the-top antics, and sugar rush sensibilities. Fight or Flight is absolute nonsense where logic should never enter into one’s mind, and the stakes are “whatever,” but it has so much madcap energy that its sheer gusto pushes things in a consistently entertaining direction.
Perpetually drunk and disgraced former Secret Service agent Lucas Reyes (Josh Hartnett) has been lying low in Bangkok when a hated former colleague (Katee Sackhoff) comes calling for a desperate favour. A blackhat hacker known only as The Ghost has just pulled one over on an intelligence agency and is hopping on a sixteen hour trans-Pacific flight to San Francisco. The agency doesn’t have any operatives that can get to the airport fast enough, and they make sure to not give the highly resistant and capably lethal Reyes any choice but to accept the mission. Reyes is put on The Ghost’s flight to try and find a person that has kept their identity a closely guarded secret for years, bringing them back alive to the United States and turning them over to the authorities. What he doesn’t realize is that a ten million dollar bounty has been put on the head of The Ghost and the double decker commercial jet he just boarded is populated mostly by high level assassins and aggrieved marks looking to collect.
What makes Fight or Flight such an unlikely success is that it gets by on style and charisma alone. On a structural level, the script from Brooks McLaren and D.J. Controna is borderline unusable, chock full of holes, contradictions, and all-too-easily spotted reveals that wouldn’t shock grade schoolers that shouldn’t be watching this thing in the first place. But on the bright side, McLaren and Controna are sure to concoct a solid list of outlandish scenarios and snappy banter that can keep things peppy and funny. The plot – which amounts to little more than Bullet Train, but, you know, on a plane – seems to be making everything up as it goes along, and all of its machinations are utter garbage, but amid all of their dumpster diving, McLaren and Controna find some real gems.
The majority of the heavy lifting here falls to Madigan and his inspired choice of leading man. Madigan, who has an extensive background as an assistant director and visual effects supervisor, makes the absolute most out of his limited space and budget. Employing the help of cinematographer Matt Flannery (who has shot The Raid and Havoc director Gareth Evans’ action masterpieces) and fight coordinator Brahim Chab (who has worked on Monkey Man some positively legendary genre epics in Asia), Fight or Flight approaches Sam Raimi Evil Dead 2 levels of insanity. The bone crunching, head smashing, blood spurting gore on display in Fight or Flight is enough to make most slasher movie aficionados blush with envy. If one is looking for a bunch of creative ways to kill someone in the most outlandish way possible amid close quarters, Fight or Flight is your delight. The action is so good (especially a drug fuelled freakout that’s one of the best scenes in any movie this year) that I wonder if the writers didn’t just start with a bunch of ideas for death scenes and then tried their best to weave a plot around them. The tone is meant to be full on cartoonish from start to finish, and Madigan brings an enticing surrealist quality to a movie that doesn’t want to be taken too seriously.
And for his part, the underrated Hartnett is more than down to go full force physically and comedically. With a disheveled appearance, a mop of bleach blonde hair, and a crazed look in his eye, Hartnett plays his merc with a mouth like prime era Bruce Willis on a psychotropic bender. Bouncing around like a pinball and zippy with the one liners, Hartnett makes for a compelling and hilarious modern action hero. He gets a great assist from the more buttoned down, but still highly capable Charithra Chandran as a helpful flight attendant enlisted by the hero to help keep an eye on things.
It’s not all perfect, with an abrupt and somewhat unsatisfying ending making for a rough landing, but Fight or Flight has the juice where it counts most. The sheer audacity and energy of Madigan and Hartnett more than paper over those pesky shortcomings in the plotting, character, and logic departments. This definitely isn’t the kind of film one goes to for high drama. It’s the kind of movie people go to when they’re high or want to get high off a good time.
Fight or Flight opens in theatres everywhere on Friday, May 9, 2025.
