Josh Hartnett always had the chops to be a potential action star following breakout roles in the war dramas Pearl Harbor and Black Hawk Down. What came after was a string of less-than-stellar thrillers ranging from Hollywood Homicide to Lucky Number Slevin, as the young actor was still defining himself in movies. Now with some seasoned, critically acclaimed performances under his belt, Hartnett finally found his groove in the action genre with Fight or Flight.

A ridiculously offbeat action comedy from longtime VFX supervisor James Madigan, making his feature directorial debut, Fight or Flight balances the insanity of Hong Kong action pictures with an underlying heart that a comparable thriller like Bullet Train was lacking. Released last spring with very little promotion, the film earned a 77% certified fresh critics score from Rotten Tomatoes, while the audience score was a roughly mixed 74%. With a strong mix of eye-popping practical stunts and unique, colorful characters played by Hartnett, Katee Sackhoff, Charithra Chandran, and Julian Kostov, Fight or Flight is a return to the kind of high-stakes human jeopardy that made Die Hard an instant classic.

What Is ‘Fight or Flight’ About?

Alcoholic Secret Service agent-gone-rogue Lucas Reyes (Hartnett) resides in Bangkok following a past incident that made him a wanted man. Soon, Lucas gets called out of hiding by his ex-girlfriend, Katherine Brunt (Sackhoff), whose secret agency is tracking a mysterious hacker taking down the economies of multiple foreign countries named “Ghost”. The agency needs Lucas to board a flight out of Bangkok to the US, where he must identify one of the passengers as Ghost and apprehend the hacker in exchange for the disgraced agent’s freedom.

Once on board the plane, however, Lucas discovers that getting Ghost will not be an easy feat. Various assassins are posing as passengers hired by rival organizations hellbent on eliminating the Ghost and are not afraid to harm Lucas to get to the mystery hacker, who can only be identified by a bullet wound. Aided by the plane’s in-flight attendants, including Isha (Chandran), Lucas becomes increasingly torn between loyalty to his employers and the greater threat of Ghost’s powerful computer system on the plane that would empower the agency’s true owners.

Like Bullet Train and the various action films that influenced it, Fight or Flight takes place in confined spaces, featuring one man against an army of assassins. What makes Madigan’s film stand out is that natural B-movie direction never strays into the forced, heightened cartoon levels of Bullet Train’s absurdity with juggling random A-list players as killers, Deadpool-influenced quips, and an anxiety-ridden protagonist played by Brad Pitt who rarely breaks a sweat. Fight or Flight, however, makes every second of its 90-minute run time count by keeping the central focus on Hartnett and Chandran while making the audience feel their exhaustion within an endless violent gauntlet.

Josh Hartnett Finds His Action Hero Groove in ‘Fight or Flight’

When it comes to the spectacle aspect of Fight or Flight, it’s the chaos of director Madigan throwing everything, including the kitchen sink, that makes it so entertaining. The sequence where a hole gets blown out of the plane during an in-flight melee has been seen countless times in movies like Passenger 57 and Drop Zone. But to have the sequence manifested with chainsaws, seatbelts, and fold-down trays used as weapons, plus the inclusion of a trio of female Asian martial artists lifted from a Tsui Hark movie, action fans absolutely get their money’s worth. The beauty of the action under Madigan’s direction is how messy it can get to the extent that it never feels fully choreographed. That’s what keeps Fight or Flight grounded in human stakes as opposed to Bullet Train constantly winking at the audience about how cool the action looks from a visual standpoint.

Hartnett shows growth as an actor decades after his heartthrob days by playing up the quirkiness of Lucas. The star’s early attempts in the action genre were primarily one-dimensional protagonists relying on his good looks with little character depth. But when Hartnett made his twisted turn as a suspected serial killer in M. Night Shyamalan’s Trap, he proved that he can elevate dark characters just by his eccentric acting choices. His role as Lucas is similar to Bruce Willis’s disgraced private eye in The Last Boy Scout, but with more of a spark in the eye, as Fight or Flight’s bleached blonde hero frequently changes attire from a colorful Hawaiian shirt to pajamas and other strange wardrobes after each fight. Where he shines most is Fight or Flight’s laugh-out-loud moment of Lucas getting stoned after taking a psychedelic substance that turns the POV shots of his in-flight melee into bizarre fantasy land sequences that look like a living anime. Hartnett’s twisted, bloody smile in this sequence epitomizes just how unhinged Fight or Flight is.

The simplicity and inventiveness of the action make Fight or Flight very worthy of a continuing franchise with lots of opportunities to go beyond the airplane setting. Hartnett’s character is fascinating enough by just his quirky charisma to be expanded into further high-octane adventures in any part of the world.

Fight or Flight is streaming on Paramount+ in the US.

Release Date

May 9, 2025

Runtime

102 minutes

Director

James Madigan

Producers

Basil Iwanyk, Tai Duncan, Erica Lee