Fight or Flight is a great showcase for Josh Hartnett with enough gonzo hand to hand fights to satisfy action junkies.
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I'm always a fan of formerly pigeon-holed actors rivatlizating their careers. Especially if they seemingly fell off the face of the earth for a spell. That's definitely been the case for Josh Hartnett, who entered the movie world in the late nineties as a hearthrob, played a number of "young gun" type characters in the early to mid 2000s before fading into the background of small budget and indie projects. A familiar career arc for a lot of actors. But over the last five years Hartnett has had a resurgence thanks to strong supporting roles in critical favorites like Oppenheimer, a starring role against type in Trap, and now he's going full blown burnout action comedy hero in Fight or Flight...which might be my favorite performance of the whole bunch.
The Setup
Hartnett stars as Lucas Reyes, a disgraced/burned former Secret Service agent who's been tagged by the C.I.A. with an important task: find a world class hacker on a commercial flight and deliver them to the agency. There's just one problem. The plane is loaded with assassins who all want said hacker and Reyes dead. So now this unlikely duo will have to work together, and keep Reyes upright and sober enough to fend off a barrage of attacks thousands of feet in the air.
Fight or Flight is a silly action movie that's having a lot of fun being a silly action movie. All of our characters are completely over-the-top whether they're a C.I.A. analyst or an assassin, the violence is gleefully excessive all with a gallows humor attitude towards the whole premise.
It's a tone that perfectly encapsulated by Josh Harnett's lead character Lucas Reyes. As described, Reyes is a guy we've seen before. A formerly promising cop-type that's now trying to kill himself slowly through alcoholism. But there's an added spice to the character: hate.
He hates that this is his life, he hates his former flame at the C.I.A. for asking him to do this, and he hates anyone in the way of his goal. Which means every assassin coming to collect is treated like a new irritation that's getting in the way of his freedom or the continuation of his bender. Take the snarky parts of John McClane and give them steroids and you've got Reyes. It's also a great foil to our eventually revealed hacker who is driven by ideals and seems to sense that beneath all of this bluster is a guy that probably cares too much.
So that's the added flavor that makes this movie stand-out amongst its action comedy brethren (besides the premise). How does it play out?
Really well actually.
Because of the setup, the baseline for the movie is a series of hand to hand action beats with exposition or new reveals dropping between bouts. As such, you want there to be a logical escalation for the action as we go from an isolated one on one bout, to a larger fight against multiple opponents, before exploding into full plane chaos by the film's end. Which sounds easy, but is a lot harder when you realize you should also have the action beats rise in intensity and avoid repetition, which Fight or Flight does really well. Each fight has a different location or weapon focus, and all of the fights make great use of the environment or said weapons to deliver violent sight gags (i.e. there's an entire bit with a small assassin being shoved into and popping out of an overhead storage bin).
And because this is a comedy, almost all of these beats end with a killshot firework or commentary from the non-combatants.
And as overly convoluted as the plot often is (see why the C.I.A. is so deadset on this hacker and their involvement in the whole affair), I actually liked this element quite a lot. There's a tendency in a lot of action thrillers to portray the C.I.A. as ruthlessly efficient, pragmatic (even when they do evil things) and not like a series of flawed meat bags who often get high on their own power and use people like pawns. So introducing our agents as walking garbage who Reyes is perpetually suspicious of is not only refreshing, it honestly feels more realistic. Also hell yeah movie, take the American government to task for all of its moral compromises.
My only real complaint are some visual and character choices I didn't vibe with. At least one of the fights is all hand held camera work with quick cuts, which is harder than necessary to follow, and there's an over reliance of warped perspective via drugs to add physical comedy to the fights. It's becoming a thing in action movies now, and unless you're going really weird with it (i.e. the neon dunked explosive visuals in The Fall Guy) maybe just play it straight.
My only real complaint are some visual and character choices I didn't vibe with. At least one of the fights is all hand held camera work with quick cuts, which is harder than necessary to follow, and there's an over reliance of warped perspective via drugs to add physical comedy to the fights. It's becoming a thing in action movies now, and unless you're going really weird with it (i.e. the neon dunked explosive visuals in The Fall Guy) maybe just play it straight.
But when the movie leans on Harnett's acerbic performance and hand to hand combat carnage, it's an awful lot of fun. And considering that's most of the movie, it's a real fun time.
The Verdict: Wild Fun
Absurd in premise and execution, Fight or Flight is a great showcase for Josh Hartnett with enough gonzo hand to hand fights to satisfy action junkies. 7/10
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