The prospect of Josh Hartnett gone gonzo is enough to raise an eyebrow in the general direction of Fight or Flight (now streaming on Paramount+), an action-comedy with more than its fair share of Trap-like closeups of its charismatic lead pulling a mischievous expression. Having made a name for himself in the early ’00s with Black Hawk Down and Pearl Harbor, Hartnett’s starshine fizzled, finding him in a string of direct-to-video titles before the 2020s marked a return to relevance with a couple of Guy Ritchie films, a terrific supporting role in the Oppenheimer boys’ club, and then M. Night Shyamalan’s Trap, a ridiculous movie made palatable by his inspired performance. This new film finds him double-billed with a whole lotta stylish extreme violence courtesy first-time director James Madigan, and the result is… well, nobody involved with it is going to win any Oscars, but it at least marks the continuation of the HARTNAISSANCE.
The Gist: Guns, ninjas, chainsaws, ironic needle-drop – if you find air travel taxing, well, be thankful you aren’t on this flight. How’d we get here? Very carefully: 12 HOURS EARLIER, somewhere in a big sprawling building is one of those command-slash-surveillance centers where higher-up government muckety-mucks stand in the back and oversee their OPS – you know, as in the black OPS, always with the OPS, these movies – barking orders at minions who tappity-tap at keyboards and pull up security-cam footage of anywhere on the planet within seconds. The honcho around here is Katherine Brunt (Katee Sackhoff) who, with a name like that, and a hairstyle like that, and glasses like that, and a jawline like that, clearly Takes No Shit. Her chief minion (Julian Kostov) reveals that their object of interest, a person known only as the Ghost, has been spotted in Bangkok. Unfortunately, they have no assets in Bangkok. But they do have Brunt’s ex-boyfriend, blackballed former agent Lucas Reyes (Hartnett), on the ground, which, well, you gotta do what you gotta do when you’re desperate, right?
One look at Reyes and you get the impression that he used to shtoink someone named Brunt. He’s drunk all the time, but still cut like a jiu-jitsu guy, and all bruised up from gawd knows what scuffles he gets into. We meet him as he awakens gawd knows where, and wanders into a bar and says “Good morning” to the bartender who informs him, “It’s afternoon, you hobo.” Brunt rings up Reyes for something far worse than a booty call with a person named Brunt: Find the Ghost, bring ’em back alive, and she’ll clear his name. He agrees, because what else is he gonna do, get over the fact that he used to sleep with someone with the harshest hair helmets this side of one of those aerodynamic bicycling helmets that get all pointy in the back by going to therapy? Brunt’s only instruction to him is, “This time, make sure those ethics of yours don’t intervene.”
The gig involves Reyes boarding a 16-hour flight to San Francisco and figuring out which passenger is the Ghost. He parks in first class looking like a Jackass reject, next to a zen-meditation guy. Reyes slugs down a glass of champagne, which just doesn’t cut it, but tapping the jet-fuel tank to pull a few pints isn’t an option. Not that it matters, because our guy soon realizes there’s a multimillion-dollar bounty on the Ghost’s head and the plane is therefore well-stocked with assassins, which means we’re in for some punching, kicking, eyeball-gouging, ice-axes in skulls, chainsaw-chucking (yeah sure why not) and other creative means of ending people’s lives. He allies with a flight attendant (Charithra Chandran of One Piece and Bridgerton) and gets to breakin’ bones and chokin’ out toughs, and the self-defense murdering gets even more wacky after he ingests the kind of drugs that turn your face into a Joker rictus and make you see things. It seems that 30,000 feet just isn’t flying-high enough for this movie.
Photo: Signature Films
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Fight or Flight feels like Deadpool or John Wick or Non-Stop at times, but it’s mostly Bullet Train crossed with Crank.
Performance Worth Watching: Without Hartnett going extra extra, the movie would be an unwatchable mess instead of a borderline unwatchable mess.
Memorable Dialogue: The pilots learn about the chaos about to ensue, so they lock the door, vow to keep the plane in the air and start counting the money they’ll earn after their Sully-like story will earn them book and movie deals:
Pilot No. 1: Loooooove Hanks!
Pilot No. 2: He’s all right.
Sex and Skin: There are zero scenes in which Reyes takes the Brunt, so, none.
Photo: Courtesy Everett Collection
Our Take: Can brutal cheese-knife attacks and testicle twists at Hartnett’s expense elevate Fight or Flight above violence-for-violence’s sake quasi-Looney Tunes action piffle? Eh. I dunno. Madigan shows some visual oomph with a little creative choreography in the airplane aisles and a curiously enormous first-class restroom, and some welcome splashes of color that look especially keen when they’re splashed with red (some of it of the phony digital variety, unfortunately). But the screenplay, by D.J. Cotrona and Brooks McLaren, offers a who-cares boilerplate plot that’s a few curlicues too convoluted for its own good, and characters thinner and flimsier than a page in a vintage issue of Howard the Duck.
Now, I’m fine with a subtext-free emptybrain action-movie diversion, especially if it’s reasonably well-directed like this one. The film generates a few laughs thanks to its star’s forgivably indulgent performance, and Madigan’s flair for well-timed, uberviolent physical comedy. But Hartnett has nothing to work with beneath the full-blown cartoon that is his sad-sack wastoid character, and the film struggles to inspire a single giveashit until it’s overstayed its welcome via repetitive action sequences and what seems like dozens of nudge-wink “funny” soundtrack cues that all but beg, “Please LOL!!!!1!1!!1!” A stronger screenplay might’ve done a little something more with those ethics and therefore given us an emotional handhold, but Fight or Flight is more interested in chopping off that hand and watching it fly out the hole in the fuselage.
Our Call: It’s not quite Fight or Blight — Hartnerds will likely find more traction here than the rest of us civilians — but it’s close enough for me to indulge the stupid-ass pun. SKIP IT.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
