Fight or Flight Review

If Josh Hartnett feels similar helium missed retired connected the Crank-style enactment movies of the precocious 2000s, Fight oregon Flight gives him the unusual accidental to ellipse back. Arguably Hartnett’s archetypal movie arsenic an enactment lead, Fight oregon Flight is successful the contented of winkingly over-the-top exercises similar Shoot ‘Em Up and Drive Angry that marque a constituent to revel successful their ain convulsive ridiculousness. With the novelty of those quais-trangressions agelong since worn off, however, this attack needs much than axenic cognition to truly succeed.

Fight oregon Flight is self-consciously edgy adjacent earlier it gets into immoderate existent mayhem. It opens with the profane control-room panic of steely firm cause Aaron Hunter (Julian Kostov) and his steelier brag Katherine Brunt (Katee Sackhoff) arsenic they recognize that a tech-savvy fugitive nicknamed the Ghost has nabbed an all-powerful integer instrumentality (yes, 1 of those) and is astir to alert from Bangkok to San Francisco. Everything Brunt and Hunter accidental to each different is axenic movie-world stupidity, directed by James Madigan with the evident anticipation that coaxing the actors to work each enactment with arsenic overmuch brusque, controlled fury arsenic imaginable volition summation the urgency. These are the benignant of atrocious control-room scenes viewers tolerate to get to the implied committedness of onscreen havoc, and Katherine seems acceptable to deliver: Desperate and lacking operatives connected the crushed to scope the level successful time, she calls successful disgraced erstwhile cause Lucas Reyes (Hartnett) – the lone antheral near for the job! (Liam Neeson must’ve been unavailable.)

Because truthful overmuch of Fight oregon Flight proceeds successful fits and starts, it takes a portion to recognize that Hartnett’s main occupation is stringing the movie along, doing his champion to legitimize a cutely ridiculous premise that mutates into an adjacent much outlandish one. First, Lucas is tasked with boarding the plane, figuring retired who the Ghost is during the flight, and bringing them into custody live erstwhile they land. But it turns retired others person figured retired that the Ghost is connected this flight, too, and aren’t truthful keen connected keeping their people alive, which means Lucas has to combat disconnected a plane’s worthy of attackers, assassins, and mercenaries after he’s unmasked the Ghost.

That Hartnett is capable to adjacent instrumentality this worldly halfway is simply a immense recognition to his re-ascendant star. Imagine, anterior to the releases of Trap and Oppenheimer, watching an enactment movie wherever the redeeming grace, classiest element, and battered psyche are each the erstwhile heartthrob of The Faculty and Pearl Harbor fame. Visibly doing galore of his ain stunts, Hartnett’s show is much carnal and little intelligence than his exemplary enactment arsenic M. Night Shyamalan’s serial-killer-disguised-as-doting-dad; astatine his core, Lucas Reyes is much similar a bladed quality retired of Bullet Train, the David Leitch beat-’em-up that this movie often recalls.

To Madigan’s credit, the craziest enactment successful Fight oregon Flight goes a batch harder than Bullet Train. There are a coagulated 15 minutes oregon truthful wherever sheer tripped-out cartoon madness takes over, piling connected the improbable additions – hallucinations, a chainsaw – with glee. But that’s not overmuch of the movie, and the manager struggles to coherently convey what, exactly, is going connected successful betwixt those all-in melees. For example, immoderate clip is taken to constituent retired that astatine slightest a fewer radical connected the manifest truly are mean civilians. But alternatively than up the stakes, this lone serves to marque Fight oregon Flight look careless astir what really happens to the passengers who don’t merit to die. Whatever their edgelord tendencies, Crank and Shoot ‘Em Up are little haphazard astir navigating that enactment betwixt silly provocation and implicit disregard for collateral damage, portion little amped movies similar Neeson’s Non-Stop bash a amended occupation of gathering toward pulpy pandemonium.

In the end, Fight oregon Flight isn’t adjacent truly absorbing capable to beryllium genuinely nihilistic. It’s conscionable different uneven enactment exercise, proudly saying thing astir its ill-defined characters. (The lone quality different than Lucas who isn’t a ocular gimmick oregon a one-note caricature is the formation attendant played by Charithra Chandran.) It zaps to beingness for a mates of combat sequences and becomes robotically dreadful successful the galore pointless control-room scenes. Back successful 2008 oregon so, this mightiness person been Josh Hartnett’s champion starring conveyance successful ages. Congratulations are successful bid that by 2025, helium intelligibly deserves thing better.