Fight or Flight Review
Fight or Flight is undeniably the poor man’s Bullet Train, but what it lacks in quality and production value, it more than makes up for in sheer fun.
After 2 years in the cold, Lucas Reyes (Josh Hartnett) is called by his former work and life partner Katherine Brunt (Katee Sackhoff) to help catch an infamous hacker called the ‘Ghost’ on board a flight from Asia back to the US. Once he’s on the flight, however, he finds out that it is full of assassins looking to take out not just he, but the mythical hacker as well. Lucas partners with flight attendant Isha (Charithra Chandran) to track down the killers and take them out one by one.
Fight or Flight reads like a plane version of a certain Brad Pitt starring actioner from a few years ago, but while the concept may be similar, that is where a lot of the similarities end. Because while that movie was elevated B-movie, and despite its high title, this firmly eschews the ‘elevated’.
Everything from the performances and the screenplay, to the action, lighting and costuming, feels cheap in this film. The music choices are particularly egregious - a series of needle-drop moments with barely recognisable music, and large swathes of silence that make you feel like this is an unfinished film. On the ground, the CIA-style characters are shallow cardboard cutouts, walking around offices and rooms meant to feel fancy, but all too often belying the fact they are seemingly unfinished sets. And in the sky? The series of barely there bad guys played by actors you’ve never heard of, mixed with set design that too often skews towards the budgetarily limited, means that it never fully convinces.
There is a bright spark among this, and it's Josh Hartnett. Hartnett chews up and spits out this material, bringing such a vibrant effervescence to his role that it's hard not to love him every second he’s on screen. And to its credit, the script gives him plenty of fun moments to work with. The action can be particularly brutal when it works, with the film's odd lack of score adding at times to the sound design’s brutality. There’s also a wonderful sequence where his character gets high on a toxin, and the ensuing chaos in battle is handled extremely well in a laugh out loud way.
There’s also a standout performance from Hughie O’Donnell as First Class Cabin Manager Garrett. He’s wonderful in the role. Unfortunately, that’s as far as the performance praise can go, because the rest of the cast barely registers, and co-star Charithra Chandran is exceedingly lacklustre.
Ultimately, this is a film that had the potential to steer into a true plane crash, but it’s through the brutality in the action sequences, and the ‘giving it his all’ performance of Josh Hartnett, that this film somehow averts disaster. For those looking for a schlocky actioner, this might just be up your alley.
