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Fight or Flight is a low-rent Bullet Train… on a plane. It stars Josh Harnett.
Harnett follows the Colin Farrell trajectory with me. He annoyed me early in his career. Now I enjoy seeing him pop up. For example, Trap is functionally retarded, yet Harnett is a hoot to watch as a serial killer who likely owns several pairs of New Balance shoes.
“Hey, see that trap door? We should see where it goes?”
What a goofball…
Fight or Flight teased the possibility of seeing Harnett flex his fight choreography muscles and dispatch assassins in gory fashion…on a plane.
You son of a bitch, I’m in. Does the premise fly or crash? Let’s find out…
No, I will not drop the chainsaw. All your cycles have synched up, and I’m scared…
Fight or Flight
Here’s the situation:
A mysterious terrorist, Ghost, is on a plane. Their identity is unknown. Harnett is a former secret service agent (with the same backstory as Hallenbeck in The Last Boy Scout) exiled to Bangkok. As a last resort, Harnett is dispatched to board the plane and identify Ghost. Unfortunately, a plethora of assassins have also boarded the plane to claim a bounty on Ghost’s head. Will they get their pound of flesh, or will Harnett John Wick them into bloody wads of evil?
That’s a perfectly fine plot for a movie like this, and Harnett is effortless as a world-weary, cynical hero with a penchant for booze, unruly facial hair and slacker clothing. Harnett also provides an aura of bemusement about it all, as Fight or Flight is action/comedy.
The problems with Fight or Flight do not lie with Harnett. If anything, it reinforces the notion that Harnett probably has a fine action movie in him if someone cobbles it together. Fight or Flight is hobbled by a couple of bad choices. We will go into them with full spoilers.
Fight or Flight of the Navigator
First, let’s look at the meta-data. James Madigan directs. He worked on visual effects of films like Iron Man 2, The Meg and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen Risen Beasts Bumblebee.
The parts of the story that Madigan capture are workmanlike enough, but it feels like Fight or Flight only reaches 70 percent of its potential. For example, the final fight seems truncated, with a lot of it taking place offscreen.
Things like this could be attributed to budget. Fight or Flight is a $10 million movie. Even the original John Wick got approximately $25 million, and that was 11 years ago.
Ergo, perhaps Madigan was hobbled by lack of resources and deserves some slack.
Derek Kolstad and D. J. Cotrona wrote Flight or Flight. The story even made the 2020 Black List for best unproduced screenplays. Kolstad also had a hand in writing the John Wick and Nobody movies. Meanwhile, Cotrona is more actor than writer. He appeared in the From Dusk Till Dawn TV series, G.I. Joe: Retaliation and Shazam!
That sort of duo should know what to deliver in a movie like this, and maybe they did. We don’t have the original screenplay. Maybe it was the producers that insisted on Fight or Flight’s most grievous issue, which we will now examine.
Whoa, just take the “strong” down a notch, lady. You might win a Mr. Olympia trophy here.
Fight Club or Flight
A movie like this can live or die on its villain. Ghost sounds cool, but the character ends up being as lame as Tiny Tim. You see, Ghost is not really a terrorist. Ghost is a modern-day Robin Hood, targeting groups who exploit the common folks. Socially conscious villains are simply no fun. We want to see moustache twirling and comeuppance in films like this.
Next, Ghost is miscast. The character is a brown woman — Charithra Chandran (Eternals) to be exact. When this is revealed, along with the insistence that she is actually really great instead of bad, you can hear the echoes of DEI backslapping above the punches. She does not belong in a movie like this. She belongs in an episode of Big Bang Theory.
That is why I would be curious to see the original screenplay. Was this always the intention of Kolstad and Cotrona or was it a lame change to check boxes? I’m going to also give Kolstad and Cotrona the benefit of the doubt and guess the latter.
Way to femme up a man movie, producers. I hope the $4.3 million box office you generated with this decision was worth it…
Does this hairstyle make me look like a rooster?
Fight For Your Right To Party or Flight
In the end, Fight or Flight is maybe slightly above average but only barely. Harnett is good. The general plot is sufficient. The action is okay. My favorite part is when Harnett accidentally ingests toad venom instead of adrenaline.
This mistake causes Harnett to start tripping during the climax. He stands chest-to-chest with a lady assassin and stares in wonderment at the fountain of sparks shooting out of her head while the innocent passengers on the plane also ooh and ahh in wonder at the sight.
Then POV smashes back to reality. The fountain of sparks is actually gushing blood because Harnett embedded a climber’s ax in the assassin’s skull, and all the passengers are actually screaming as they get soaked in her blood.
It’s a daffy moment. Alas, Fight or Flight will be forgotten as a whole…
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