Fight or Flight

Fight or Flight (2025) drops Josh Hartnett into a high-altitude powder keg. He plays Lucas, a former Secret Service agent with more baggage than the cargo hold, trying to lay low after a career-ending failure. But when he boards a flight from Bangkok to San Francisco, his quiet exit plan gets blown out of the sky. His mission? Protect a mystery passenger known only as The Ghost. The problem is, the entire flight’s crawling with professional killers who want them both dead.

Fight or Flight Review

Neither as much fun, nor as zeroed in, Fight or Flight is Bullet Train’s spiritual cigarette-baby brother, but that’s the end of the world.

Josh Hartnett, whose rising star was nearly shot out of the sky in Pearl Harbor, has struggled to find his footing in Hollywood ever since. The early 2000s heartthrob, after featuring in a couple of major blockbusters (even if one was a three hour piece of crap) all but disappeared from view until 2023’s Oppenheimer reminded American audiences of his existence and showed us that the now forty-something Minnesotan has some acting chops. That said, you could be forgiven if you thought that last year’s N. Night Shaymalan train-wreck, Trap, would once again tank any hopes that the actor had at a resurgence.

Fortunately, not only is Hartnett not the worst thing about Fight or Flight, he’s the sole reason that it kinda sorta works as a passable excuse to grab a matinee. His charm and charisma sell 40% of his character despite never-ending tonal shifts and a complete lack of style from director James Madigan (assistant director – Transformers: Rise of the Beasts). The remaining 60% is sold by how effortlessly bad@$$ the now middle-aged actor appears to be in the film’s numerous fight scenes. It’s the same easy comfort with violence that Brad Pitt exhibited in both Fight Club and Bullet Train. Despite the ridiculousness of the premise and some fairly substantial deficiencies, it allows audience members to suspend their disbelief just enough to engage in a lot of mindless, derivative, and narratively bankrupt violence.

The rest of the cast, even the supposed co-stars Chairitha Chandran and Katie Sackhoff, are so many empty calories whose existence lends no emotional weight to the story. Sackhoff is little more than a glorified exposition machine with RBF, while Chandran looks mostly pleasant when delivering any number of the movie’s many plot-convenient info dumps. This is no fault of the actresses. Sackhoff gives her usual borderline solid performance, and Chandran is as natural as one can be when delivering lines that no human would say. Their weaknesses are a combination of an uninspired script and director Madigan’s inconsistency.

Fight or Flight has much potential as an over-the-top battle royal that takes the Die Hard model and injects 1.33 cc’s of HGH into its metaphorical abs. Regrettably, Madigan seems incapable of sticking to a consistent cinematic flavor from scene to scene, with Hartnett’s character clumsily transitioning from sincere and pitiable patsy to unstoppable cartoon ninja to dispirited and withdrawn loser almost without warning. So too, Madigan, for whom this is his first time in the director’s chair of a feature film, seems unwilling to fully commit to the film’s hammy villains, with all but one exhibiting anything more than the most cursory characteristics and distinctiveness. It’s no coincidence that this singular scoundrel’s scenes are also the most fun.

As creatively limited as Fight or Flight is, it does possess just enough humor and solid enough pacing and serviceable enough action for a casual viewing. Here’s hoping that Hartnett’s three upcoming projects take better advantage of the overlooked actor.

WOKE ELEMENTS

Chantilly Lace and a Pretty Face

• There’s an abundance of “strong female” characters in the film. However, the action, though over the top, is handelded pretty well, with the much smaller women rarely being shown as the physical equals of the men. In fact, at first, the lead female started off as an atypical 3-foot-tall Hollywood snark machine right up until Josh Hartnett put her in her place– causing her to do an attitudinal 180° about-face.
  • There are other such instances of subverted wokeness.
• • Katie Sackoff’s character is paired with a weaker, weaselly male subordinate to give her an excuse to be rude and continually put him down. I didn’t mark the Woke-O-Meter down as much as you might think I should have for this because she’s barely in the film.

Caucasian Calculus

• There’s a lot of diversity in the film. However, when one considers that 97% of the movie takes place on an international flight leaving Bangkok for the U.S., the mix seems fairly organic. That said, since Josh Hartnett is a stong and capable white male, it stands to reason that all of the other white men are either evil, morons, or flamboyantly gay.
  • Not every evil male is white, but the majority are.
  • Not everyone who is evil is male, but the majority are.
  • The moron in question is the dumpy co-pilot. To be fair, the Indian or Middle Eastern pilot isn’t much better, but there is still a marked difference between the two.
  • The flamboyant homosexual is one of the two male flight attendants. The other is a diminutive, dark-complected coward.
  • I didn’t mark the Woke-O-Meter down much because none of these characters make much of a singular impact on the film, nor do they have much screentime.