2024 | R | 102 mins | Directed by James Madigan
Over the last few years Josh Hartnett has slowly made his way back into the limelight. While never completely leaving acting, for a while he was only popping up in a few things here and there. None of which was all that noteworthy. Now with roles in movies like Wrath of Man, Oppenheimer and Trap, Hartnett is starting to make a name for himself once again. Fight or Flight sees him taking a different role than he's played in a while, as a mercenary who is skilled in hand-to-hand combat. Unfortunately, a committed performance by Hartnett isn't enough to make Fight or Flight worthwhile.
The movie follows Josh Hartnett plays Lucas Reyes, a mercenary who is hired for a job where he must board a plane to track down a target. While on the plane he ends up having to protect the target from many killers who are not only trying to kill his target, but also Lucas himself. Together, Lucas and Isha (Charithra Chandran), must join forces to take down the never-ending hordes of killers on their plane.
This is the type of movie that wants to have its cake and eat it too. The movie is directed by first time Director James Madigan. He has done a lot of second unit directing in his career, but it is easy to see that this is his directorial debut for a feature film. While the story is straightforward, and really doesn't have much going for it, the direction feels a bit all over the place. There are moments when the action sequences look fine and then other times when they look sloppy. Some moments feel like they come completely out of nowhere and the tone shifts so much throughout there are times when it's hard to tell when the movie is trying to be serious and when it's not. Everything is mostly played as ridiculous and over the top as it can be and there are moments where it can be fun, but they are too few and far between.
Josh Hartnett is having a ball with his performance, and he chews the scenery the entire time. Charithra Chandran is a nice counterpart to Hartnett's character. They both play well off each other and have some good scenes together. Outside of the main two performances, nobody else in the cast is all that memorable. Katee Sackhoff feels like she is in a completely different movie. The movie constantly goes back to her character time and time again and none of it feels like it plays into anything going on in the plane sequences.
Despite some of the action sequences looking sloppy, a lot of the hand-to-hand fight scenes are a highlight. There is a lot of blood and gore as characters get killed with all kinds of various tools and it all looks good for the most part. The makeup department and digital effects team put in some good work to make everything look as good as they can. Once it hits a certain point it is nonstop action until the end. After so long, it hits a certain point where it just gets tiresome and with nothing to really latch onto in the story there just isn't much here to really enjoy.
Fight or Flight has some entertaining fight sequences and features another solid performance from Josh Hartnett. The movie suffers from some poor direction, bad editing at times and a story that just doesn't have anything to keep the audience invested. A lot of potential that feels like it was poorly executed.
Grade: C-
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