by Jeff Alan, Contributing Writer
Summer blockbuster season has arrived, and with it has come several hit films already, but while Fight or Flight shoots for the stars, it ends up running out of steam and falling on the roof. The film stars Josh Hartnett, adding to his pseudo-renaissance of the last few years, along with most notably Katee Sackhoff as pretty much the only other big name in the cast.
The story is relatively straight forward: Lucas (Hartnett) — a disgraced former agent of some kind (you find out more later) — is pulled back into his former agency when a shadowy terrorist known only as “The Ghost” happens to be boarding a plane in Bangkok where Lucas is currently exiled. Lucas is promised his freedom back into the United States by his former colleague Katherine (Sackhoff), if he can find and detain Ghost before the plane lands in San Francisco. Upon takeoff, Lucas learns the full weight of the situation he is in, and his simple search becomes a fight for his life.
While being an entirely different movie, I watched Fight or Flight thinking it felt more like Bullet Train than anything original. It has the violence and action, and gratuitous amounts of blood, and yet for some reason, it still manages to come into its own as it goes on.
My first takeaway from the film was seeing Hartnett in a completely new kind of role, much like last year’s Trap. With Fight or Flight, he takes a sillier approach, and it’s what sets the film apart. It has good enough comedic timing to be mildly enjoyable, and Hartnett has a lot to do with that.
Onto some negatives: While there are some fun moments, Fight or Flight lacks the energy and excitement that movies like Bullet Train have. We get moments of fun with Hartnett, but outside of those brief stints, there’s not a lot that pulls the viewer in fully. It relies on its action and bloody violence to keep the viewers’ attention, when in reality it only makes me think, “I’ve seen this before, done better”.
Then comes the reveal that there is some form of conspiracy happening behind the scenes — it’s a bit convoluted, albeit predictable, and introduces a MacGuffin that I don’t believe is fully explained. It doesn’t make complete sense at the end. All of that being laid out for us through the back half of the film brings it lower in the ranks for me. And the film tries to give us a few moments of heartfelt emotion towards the end, but it’s somewhat forced, and not at all earned.
My final gripe with the film — and it’s a really dumb one — is the title choice. Fight or Flight is the most generic title for something like this. It’s almost like the writer had the script saved on their hard drive under the name Untitled Bullet Train Ripoff, and then needed to turn it into the studio, who titled it the most obvious thing they could think of, when in reality you probably could run the summary of the film through ChatGPT, and it could spit out 10 much better names.
For a film that I have seen almost no marketing for since the trailer was released, I think Fight or Flight is going to get what it deserves. It will more than likely lose money at the total box office, and maybe find a tiny audience once it hits streaming, but that could be just wishful thinking. The bottom line is that Fight or Flight is forgettable and just a cheap knockoff of other movies that have done it better.
Rating: Low Side of It Was Just Okay
Fight or Flight is currently playing in theaters
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