High-Octane
Summary
Fight or Flight is hugely entertaining with Josh Hartnett proving a worthy addition to the action genre and it’s nice to see Marko Zaror and JuJu Chan in more movies. The highlight of this film is obviously the chainsaw fight, but the script and supporting characters aren’t especially memorable.
Plot: A mercenary takes on the job of tracking down a target on a plane but must protect her when they’re surrounded by people trying to kill both of them.
Review: I watched this when I was in the UK a few weeks back and totally forgot to post this.
The reviews for Flight or Flight are all over the place on IMDb; some people love the wackiness of it and others think it is too ridiculous. I’m somewhere in the middle where I think it’s a lot of fun with the three standouts of the cast being Josh Hartnett, Juju Chan and Marko Zaror (who is criminally underused). The rest of the characters are pretty forgettable as is the script with no memorable dialogue.
Where the film excels is the over the top violence and hyper fast fight scenes; you can tell it’s sped up, but it’s deliberate to give it a kinetic feel and it works. The finale featuring a chainsaw on a plane is one of my favourite set-pieces I’ve seen for some time; there are buckets of blood and an impressive bodycount.
It has a few laugh out loud moments like Hartnett’s character fighting while high and there are a could of good lines, but it needed more to really stand out.
John Hartnett always makes for an appealing every-man lead and he reminds me of Bruce Willis back in his heyday; here he seems to be enjoying himself as CIA agent Reyes who is now a borderline alcoholic but can still handle himself in a fight. Katee Sackhoff plays Reyes’ ex-girlfriend Katherine Brunt who has her own reasons for wanting him on the plane but it’s too bad nothing is really resolved by the end.
Everything is left open for an inevitable sequel and I’m getting a bit tired of movies that refuse to just have a beginning, middle and an end.
Overall, Fight or Flight is crazy fun with Josh Hartnett in one of his best mainstream roles, plenty of blood soaked action and a brisk runtime coming it at around 90 minutes. I wish it had better closure rather than leaving everything open for a sequel, but this is still an entertaining ride.