'Fight Or Flight' (2025) Movie Review

Fight or Flight, the feature debut from veteran second unit director James Madigan, falls into a category of action comedies populated by recent titles like Bullet Train, Love Hurts, Day Shift, Killer’s Game, and others, that juxtapose brutal violence with quips, winking jokes, and silliness of all stripes. Think the carnage of John Wick with goofy, almost campy comedy beats. It's messy, it’s all over the place, it’s a tonal mishmash, and there’s a chainsaw on an airplane for literally no reason other than it’s awesome (and it is), but it’s also a good amount of fun.

 

Josh Hartnett continues his current run of fronting mid-tier genre fare, playing Lucas Reyes, a disgraced former secret service agent. In the midst of drinking himself to death in Thailand, a former handler, Katherine Brunt (Katee Sackhoff), calls him with a job. A mysterious international criminal named “The Ghost” is on a plane and she needs Lucas to capture them. The problem is no one knows what Ghost looks like, and there’s a price on their head, so the flight in question is full of bloodthirsty killers and wacky side characters. Sometimes they’re one and the same, like Marko Zaror’s singing assassin, Cayenne.

 

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For as straightforward as the primary plot is—he must get on a plane, discover Ghost’s identity, and capture the target—it gets so, so much more complicated. Seemingly every few minutes, the script from Brooks McLaren (How it Ends) and DJ Cotrona (his first script, though he has a substantial resume as an actor) doles out another major shift or reveal that is supposed to change everything. Most of these, however, land with a thud, but they keep coming.

 

Already a jumble—there are more than 35 credited producers, so some of that is to be expected—the pace can bog down in a mire of quirkiness. Fight or Flight tries really hard to be clever and witty, but much of it comes across as forced. Lucas has to wear too-small pajamas, Brunt pounds CBD drops for anxiety as she tears into underlings, flight attendant Isha (Charithra Chandran, Bridgerton) is sassy and spunky, there are Mormon missionaries. Every character has their eccentricities and foibles, and while that was probably fun for all the actors, much of it misses the mark. For his part, however, Hartnett’s charisma carries you through, and he has a blast ping-ponging through the plane, chewing the scenery and going for broke. He took a bunch of hallucinatory toad venom? Sure, why not?

 

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Fortunately, there’s the action. Though for an action movie, there’s not actually any until the 28-minute mark— Lucas takes out a gang of goons at a bar early on, but it happens off screen, and we only see the aftermath. But when it kicks in, it kicks in with a vengeance and delivers the goods. Madigan’s second unit experience is evident here, and he put together a hell of a team. We already mentioned Marko Zaror, and JuJu Chan Szeto (Jiu Jitsu) shows up for a late-in-the-game bout of ass-kicking. The stunt team includes significant contributions from Alain Moussi (Kickboxer: Vengeance), Laszlo Kosa (Black Widow), and Brahim Chab (Monkey Man), among others, so the choreography is top notch. And to top it all off, it’s filmed by Matt Flanery, who shot basically every Gareth Evans movie, including the Raids, so it looks great, despite primarily taking place in tight, contained environments.

 

Fight or Flight is messy, absurd, and largely inconsequential, but it’s also a decently good time. Your mileage will vary a great deal on the humor—it’s a specific brand that isn’t for everyone and some folks are bound to find tedious and exhausting—and the light and fluffy comedy mixed with moments of startling gore don’t always mix well, but strong action carries the day and I’m here for the continuing Josh Hartnett reemergence. And again, there is a chainsaw on a commercial airliner. [Grade: B-]