Movie Review: ‘Fight or Flight’

‘Fight or Flight’ receives 6 out of 10 stars.

Opening in theaters May 9th is ‘Fight or Flight,’ the new action comedy which sees Josh Hartnett playing a scruffy American agent roped into tracking down and keeping a high-value asset safe.

Directed by James Madigan, the movie also stars Charithra Chandran, Katee Sackhoff, Julian Kostov and Danny Ashok.

Related Article: Josh Hartnett Talks ‘Fight or Flight’ and Shooting the Action Sequences

Initial Thoughts

An action movie with a line of dark, often bloody humor that puts an anti-hero with a crisis of confidence in an enclosed location where he must track something down with assassins all around him?

Based on that basic premise, you might suspect that we were talking about 2022’s ‘Bullet Train,’ which saw Brad Pitt in a similar position.

That move boasted the star power of Pitt, with director David Leitch, who has wrangled together the likes of ‘Atomic Blonde,’‘Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw,’ and, of course, the first ‘John Wick.’

Here, in place of Pitt we have Josh Hartnett, and in the director’s chair is James Madigan, who came up as a second unit director and visual effects supervisor. He’s worked on the TV likes of Marvel’s ‘Runaways,’ but here makes a solid debut as the one calling the shots (and punches, and death-by-food tray) for a movie.

Script and Direction

The screenplay, from ‘How it Ends’ writer Brooks McLaren and D.J. Cotrona, who has mostly had acting jobs in movies such as ‘Shazam!’ on his resume, certainly sets out its intentions early, digging right into liberal swearing and a darkly comic tone while also rolling out some of the better-used tropes of action movies such as this.

It certainly does enough work to sketch out a world like this, and the smart choice to set the movie within the cramped environs of the plane amps up the tension, even as the jokes look to subvert that at every turn.

Nothing here is likely to win awards, and it doesn’t have the polish of more mainstream action comedies, but it’s not really looking to model itself after those, preferring the wilder beats of something along the lines of 2006’s ‘Crank.’

As a filmmaker, Madigan clearly knows his way around a set-piece, and he brings the fight scenes to life with appropriate zeal, even if the look of the movie, lensed by Matt Flannery, tends to have a fairly basic sheen. And while Madigan throws a lot into the stunts, the actors themselves are usually left with more perfunctory material, the basic threads that string the clashes together.

Cast and Performances

Josh Hartnett is clearly in his “go crazy and have fun” era and between this and M. Night Shyamalan’s ‘Trap,’ it’s certainly an entertaining one so far. Throwing vanity and caution to the wind as the bleached blond, frequently drunken and often in trouble burnout Lucas Reyes, he can also bring (and accept) the pain when called upon.

Reyes, a former Secret Service agent with a dark backstory (albeit one also with a big conscience), is an entertaining character for him to play, and Hartnett throws himself into the role with gusto.

Charithra Chandran is absolutely on his level (and sometimes better) as flight attendant Isha, who discovers that her latest journey is going to be more eventful than a passenger demanding snacks. She’s got some winning chemistry with Hartnett –– never so dull as to be romantic –– and can also handle herself when the moment arises.

Likewise Danny Ashok, who is appealingly nervy as her fellow staff member Royce, called upon to deal with the dead bodies that start to stack up.

Katee Sackhoff doesn’t have enough to do as the mysterious and ice cold Katherine Brunt, but she certainly seems to be having fun in the part, delivering lines with the requisite level of calm demeanor and no-nonsense vitriol.

Around them, the likes of JuJu Chan Szeto and Hughie O’Donnell add flavor to the movie in relatively small roles.

Final Thoughts

‘Fight or Flight’ seems destined to be compared to the work of Leitch and his old ‘Wick’ collaborator Chad Stahelski, not to mention the movies they’ve produced such as ‘Nobody’ and ‘Love Hurts,’ which saw unexpected action types thrown into challenging situations.

For all the weird tics he’s allowed, Hartnett is a more conventional hero and despite some more ridiculous action moments (one sequence near the end seems to be channeling the ‘Evil Dead’ movies, and stretches even this movie’s flexible believability to breaking point), he’s never going to compete with the likes of Keanu Reeves.