Reel Review: Fight Or Flight Is Packed With Silly and Over The Top Action

Lucas Reyes, a previously disgraced FBI agent is tasked with tracking down a wanted target in order to redeem himself. Once aboard a plane with the intended target, he comes to find out that he isn’t the only one looking for them.

For the sake of Josh Hartnett, I so desperately wanted to love this. While there are some fun an interesting turns, most of this movie didn’t land for me. If you’re a fan of over the top action, suspension of disbelief, and single location focused stories, than maybe this will resonate better with you. Much like Hartnett’s 2024 movie Trap, Flight or Flight suffers from issues. Overly cheesy dialogue, overly choreographed fight scenes, and absolutely no connection to real life logic all bring this film down. 

While Lucas Reyes boards a plane knowing his target is onboard, he has no idea who they are or what they look like, only that they have recently suffered a gunshot wound. As he grows suspicious of almost every single passenger, he comes to realize that he isn’t the only headhunter onboard. 

For the entire first and second act, the audience is under the impression that the order given to Lucas from his ex-girlfiend, are coming from a government agency. It is later revealed that she now works for a tech company and is trying to acquire very important and specific hardware to boost their company to overnight success that their competitors could not even begin to compete with. 

There were some interesting angles to this otherwise generic action movie, but the execution was lackluster. Charithra Chandran was a delightful surprise in this movie though. Seeing her outside of her widely acclaimed success in Bridgerton is refreshing and interesting. Her character being a sort of assassin for good was a great way to subvert expectations around what an action movie villain should be. 

If you are able to suspend your beliefs rooted in reality, then you can have fun with this one. There is over the top gore and action, even a cameo with a chainsaw (how did that get onboard??). Josh Hartnett once again proves he has leading man capabilities but has yet to be supplied with a script that reflects his skills and talent. 

Fight or Flight is playing in theaters now.