Josh Hartnett saves the riotously violent 'Fight or Flight' from crash-landing

Take note: If you person immoderate anxiousness astir flying, manager James Madigan’s “Fight oregon Flight” volition not beryllium for you. But if a inexpensive and cheerful one-setting enactment thriller à la “Bullet Train” featuring 1 of the preeminent heartthrobs of the Y2K epoch is up your alley, good past belly up to this (airport) bar. The flick isn’t a masterpiece, not adjacent a vulgar one, but it’s cheeky and entertaining capable successful its giddy hyper-violence, acknowledgment astir wholly to the prima crook of Josh Hartnett, who has proved during his caller renaissance that he’s particularly large successful bozo mode.

Hartnett was the brooding atrocious lad successful movies similar “The Faculty” and “The Virgin Suicides,” which rocketed him to stardom successful the precocious ’90s. But successful caller years, his vocation has been reinvigorated, playing characters similar “Boy Sweat Dave” successful Guy Ritchie’s “Wrath of Man,” and turning successful particularly delicious enactment successful M. Night Shyamalan’s “Trap.” For “Fight oregon Flight,” Hartnett looks consecutive retired of the 2000s with his bleached hairsbreadth and cargo shorts, the lone quality is that he’s present unleashed, freed from those moody shackles: wild-eyed and often covered successful fake humor the vibrant hue of strawberry jam.

Indeed, “Fight oregon Flight” wouldn’t enactment without his fizzy cardinal show that brings an borderline of mania to the absurd premise, which is fundamentally “Assassins connected a Plane.” The script, by Brooks McLaren and “Shazam” histrion D.J. Cotrona, draws connected the benignant of “John Wick”-style communicative that the enactment franchise perfected erstwhile it posed the question: What if determination was a bounty connected a deed man’s head? “Fight oregon Flight” borrows the conceit and sets it successful a confined, high-altitude setting, taking a humorous code for its thrills.

Hartnett plays a down-on-his luck drifter named Lucas, who wakes up successful Bangkok with a hangover, a achromatic oculus and his hated ex Katherine (Katee Sackhoff) calling him for a favor. A high-level information professional, Lucas is her past enactment aft a hacker known arsenic Ghost has stolen billions successful cryptocurrency pursuing a violent attack. Katherine needs Lucas to get connected the aforesaid level successful bid to present the hacker into custody (alive), and he’s the lone 1 she knows connected the crushed astatine the moment. When helium boards the flight, he’s not alert that a bounty connected Ghost’s caput has dispersed crossed the acheronian web and thus, the remainder of the passengers are mostly assassins, looking to marque an casual buck.

And so, aviation mayhem ensues, arsenic Lucas fights disconnected a coterie of atrocious guys done a haze of drugs and liquor. He has his ain reasons for wanting to implicit the task — events successful his past that explicate wherefore helium ended up connected his travel to the bosom of acheronian done the bottommost of a whiskey vessel successful Southeast Asia. They are honorable, of course, and erstwhile we conscionable Ghost, we observe motivations that are likewise altruistic, if a spot shallowly written.

The filmmakers would alternatively absorption connected the outlandish unit anyway. Hartnett holds his ain up and down the aisles, done the cargo country and into the bathroom, making usage of the abstraction and tools wrong his vicinity. But it’s much amusive to ticker his look determination than his body, his crazed eyes and choky grins delivering the high-wire tension. He has large chemistry with a feisty formation attendant (Charithra Chandran) and faces each foe with a gritted-teeth strength and a consciousness of genuine astonishment whenever helium bests one. Madigan is fond of the instrumentality that is mounting peculiarly bloody sequences to high-energy, tonally mismatched tunes — Hartnett bashes and stabs his mode done everything from punk to polka.

But past the already goofy “Flight oregon Flight” takes a crook to the insanely cartoonish arsenic it begins its descent, into a tangle of hallucinatory madness, unearned twists and mind-boggling cliffhangers. It’s a existent Looney Tune with a shocking magnitude of integer blood. The movie astir wholly squanders immoderate entreaty it whitethorn person churned up, but it each happens truthful fast. Surprisingly, Hartnett’s Lucas hasn’t worn retired his welcome, adjacent if the movie astir him has fallen isolated midair. Ergo, the aged truism has ne'er been truer: When it comes to “Fight oregon Flight,” your mileage whitethorn vary.

Katie Walsh is simply a Tribune News Service movie critic.