I can't remember the last time a film's opening 20 minutes had me gritting my teeth in frustration like Fight or Flight's inaugural sequences. Director James Madigan and screenwriters Brooks McLaren and D. J. Cotrona deploy an unstoppable barrage of F-bombs, wacky lewd phrases, and assorted quips in establishing how urgently powerful figure Katherine Brunt (Katee Sackhoff) needs the aid of former Secret Service agent/lover Lucas Reyes (Josh Hartnett). Heck, even a caller ID can be an opportunity to flash the F-word one last time. On paper, the spewing of profanity indicates elements like Reyes being infuriated with Brunt leaving him stranded in Bangkok or the tough-as-nails attitude of Brunt's henchman Aaron Hunter (Julian Kostov).
In execution, it’s just Fight or Flight’s yawn-worthy attempt to mimic the Deadpool-popularized style of swearing in zany modern R-rated movies. Novocaine, Boy Kills World, Bullet Train, The Hitman's Bodyguard, Guns Akimbo, this is the “legacy” Madigan’s production aims to extend. Everyone wants to be Ryan Reynolds, and it’s leaving me exhausted. Please find other ways to exude an “adult” atmosphere and other leading men to emulate. I implore you. Thankfully, Fight or Flight dials back its “edgelord” dialogue once Reyes arrives at a Bangkok airport. The super-secretive higher-ups Brunt works foe need a target known as The Ghost. They’ll be on a flight to America soon enough and it’s up to Reyes to capture this mysterious figure.
One wrinkle has emerged, though: somebody’s alerted assassins all over the world that The Ghost is on this airplane. Now, with this aircraft soaring in the heavens, those bloodthirsty killers want to capture their target and collect a massive bounty. That’s a problem for Reyes, who is under strict instructions to bring in The Ghost alive. This situation inspires the best Fight or Flight sequences, which simply revolve around skirmishes between Reyes and various colorful assassins. If there’s one happy way Madigan and company differentiate Fight or Flight from other recent R-rated action films, it’s in embracing more distinctive adversaries than Novocaine.
One of the first major fight sequences involves Reyes duking it out with Chayenne (Marko Zaror), who introduces himself as a performer prone to singing. Soon, he trades out harmonies for delivering brutal roundhouse kicks to Reyes. Zaror is already a hoot when he's just sitting down acting like an ordinary goofball. His impressive physical abilities (wow, those kicks!) add an extra layer of excitement to his presence. Yay too that Madigan and cinematographer Matt Flannery make sure the camera properly captures Zaror's footwork.
Still, there are excessively long stretches in Fight or Flight where the hand-to-hand combat goes quiet. An eventually super-predictable plotline manifests involving Reyes and flight attendant Isha (Charithra Chandran) that tries to wring out sentimentality that this feature hasn’t come close to earning. Furthermore, too much screentime focuses on flatly realized shots of Brunt and Hunter rigidly explaining their respective backstories. Those early F-bombs suggested (however misguidedly) that Fight or Flight yearned for some form of rebelliousness. Eventually, that curdles into strict adherence to traditional narrative cinema expectations.
It’s been a little over a decade since elegantly simple action movie classics like The Raid, Dredd, or John Wick. However, R-rated action titles like Fight or Flight still convolute their runtimes with extraneous subplots and forgettable MacGuffin’s. Between that problem and the overly clean photography, Fight or Flight is a shockingly unengaging exercise. Even Josh Hartnett, clearly having a ball inhabiting a more washed-up and jaded version of Kurt Russell’s Jack Burton, can't lend this project a pulse.
Before its climax (more on that in a minute), Fight or Flight’s script proved tedious enough to inspire me to uncover unintentional entertainment in throwaway details. “Any port in a storm” as they say, and in this case, anything to make the runtime more bearable. Most notably, characters like Isha, Brunt, and Hunter all name-drop phrases like “safe space” and “participation trophy” as jokes viewers are supposed to laugh at. These go-to derogatory right-wing expressions for leftist college students, though, were last really popular in society in 2018. Was this script written in the throes of 2016 and only got shot recently? I chuckled imagining this slapdash script sitting around and somehow garnering enough enthusiasm from a producer in the 2020s to get made.
Clearly, those aren’t the kind of thoughts action films should inspire. John Wick: Chapter 4, Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In, Rebel Ridge, and other great action films from the last two years had me constantly riveted on the edge of my seat. Fight or Flight, meanwhile, only sporadically held my interest. Thankfully, its finale is a grisly highlight. Cotrona and McLaren especially get props for finding a way to incorporate a chainsaw into the hand-to-hand combat. I love me a chainsaw fight, every movie should find a way to feature one. Mandy and Mad Max: Fury Road are still firmly champions of chainsaw fight cinema, but Fight or Flight provides a respectable display of this skirmish.
This violent home stretch (featuring a gaggle of assassins just tearing into each other on the plane) also benefits from nearly all of these characters wearing such delightful, brightly colored outfits. The various participants are easy to distinguish from each other and their attire is simply cool to look at. A couple of imaginative death scenes (namely one involving a flare gun) also make this a livelier section of Fight or Flight. Unfortunately, this massive brawl eventually leads to a terrible final sequence that ends the entire movie on a cliffhanger. 2 Fight 2 Flight is coming soon, I suppose.
This insipid tease for more Lucas Reyes adventures only echoes countless other modern movies (like Artemis Fowl, Skyline or Mortal Kombat) that just felt like set-up for future motion pictures. This last scene also sends Fight or Flight viewers home on such a sour note. Perhaps that’s a fitting conclusion, though. Fight or Flight began with groan-worthy “edgy” profanities. It ends teeing up a sequel that nobody wants. In between, there’s the occasional fine fight scene and a committed Hartnett performance. However, those fleeting virtues aren’t worth experiencing so much cinematic turbulence.