As much as people make out the month of May as the start of the summer movie season, there are often a week or two without a major release. This week seems to be one of those sorts of weeks, probably because no one wanted to schedule anything too close to Marvel’s Thunderbolts*, but I did catch the trailer for the new Fight or Flight, and it gave me some very Bullet Train sort-of vibes, where there was a lot of crazy action involving colorful characters in a confined space. Factor in Josh Harnett might have revived his career as the one thing really worth seeing in last year’s Trap, and this one could be a lot of fun.
Or it might stink. I would have to see it to find out.
A notorious terrorist/hacker known only as the Ghost has hopped on a plane from Bangkok to San Francisco, and when Director Katherine Brunt (Katee Sackhoff) learns of that, she knows the only real asset she has is former Secret Service agent Lucas Reyes (Hartnett), a man barred from returning to the United States for reasons that come out later. Reyes can get his life in the States back if he gets on the flight, finds Ghost, and brings the terrorist back alive. Reyes, who has been drinking heavily and spends a good deal of the movie hung over, high, or exhausted. The only clue Reyes has is that the Ghost was recently shot and may still be bleeding from said injury.
However, there is the matter of how Brunt and her underlings found out where Ghost was: the dark web may have given away Ghost’s whereabouts, and every country, criminal enterprise, and whoever else that has a grudge against them has likewise got people onto the flight whose task is to kill the Ghost, forcing Reyes to fight to protect a terrorist he’s never met before. Reyes may be a broken man in many ways, but he has a strong conscience, and he can fight. He just doesn’t know much of anything that’s going on. Can he find out before he’s a dead man?
I went into Fight or Flight with the promise of a lot of crazy fight scenes, and indeed, the movie opens with one before cutting to a “12 Hours Earlier” caption. The action sequences actually ramp up the insanity as the movie goes, and director James Madigan makes good use of the environment to creative effect. If it can be found on a plane, Reyes will use it. Additionally, there’s a whole host of oddballs and weirdos on the plane. Or, there should be.
Fight or Flight‘s biggest weakness is that, despite the insanity of the premise and the fight scenes, it isn’t as crazy as I might like it to be. The Ghost’s motives could have come from any socially-aware story, and some of the oddball characters on the plane are largely odd in appearance only. Their motives and behavior is rather conventional for this sort of movie. True, Hartnett is charming, and he has good chemistry with the Ghost unmasked, and there are a few good twists along the way, but I was hoping for something closer to the aforementioned Bullet Train where the various killers were various eccentrics and oddballs while Fight or Flight‘s various killers are largely eccentric and odd in appearance only with one or two exceptions. Most of the weirdos are the plane’s crew, and some of them are quite funny, but it wasn’t quite what I wanted. That said, yeah, the fight scenes are great.
Grade: B-
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