Fight or Flight

Remember Bullet Train? Remember how much fun it was to watch a movie about a fast-moving and functionally sealed environment where everyone is a killer?

Well, it seems like the team behind Fight or Flight liked it so much that they decided to basically remake it. Instead of a train it’s a plane, and instead of Brad Pitt as a lackadaisical mercenary it’s Josh Hartnett, who is kind of a discount Brad Pitt these days anyway. Oh, and take out the complicated back-and-forth non-linear narrative as well, because who needs that level of complication?

Not that there’s anything wrong with any of that. Bullet Train was a gloriously stupid film, all its pleasure coming from the fact it was deliciously moronic, and Brad Pitt was clearly having a gas. So, Fight or Flight has to be judged in exactly the same fabulously dumb terms, with maybe even lower standards.

The McGuffin in Bullet Train was … wait … no, I can remember this … OK, it wasn’t really that important. This time, it’s an international cyber-terrorist known only as the Ghost, who has snuck on to a flight from Bangkok to San Francisco to evade multitudinous enemies. Unfortunately, every hired killer on the continent is on the same flight, and the only person who has any interest in keeping the Ghost alive is burned-out ex-agent Lucas Reyes (Hartnett). Emerging from a boozy haze, he’s called out of retirement by his former boss (Sackhoff) to take that flight and detain the Ghost. Why’s he stuck under a bottle of booze in Bangkok? Because he’s been no-fly-listed for the last two years. At least Sackhoff’s martinet had the good grace to put him in business class on quite possibly the fanciest fictional airline in the skies.

Plane spotters may recognize this as an Airbus A380, the only full double-decker in the skies, and the excessive space in first class means that not every one of the extensive fight sequences is constrained by the close confines of economy seating – although, it must be said there would have been some humor in watching the 6-foot-3-inch Hartnett trying to squeeze into a tiny coach seat.

What’s not so entertaining is having Hartnett try to squeeze into this breathless and overstuffed story. The script from Brooks McLaren (How It Ends) and D.J. Cotrona (star of From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series) crowbars in a social message that hangs in the air like a fart in the cabin at 20,000 feet. So whenever Reyes isn’t accidentally and creatively dispatching assassins, he is supposed to be undergoing a crisis of conscience after getting out from this bash-and-smash lifestyle, and that’s less convincing than the ninja clan that suddenly turns up.

Fortunately, Hartnett can deliver on the fighting side. Despite appearances in Wrath of Man, Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre, and the unfairly overlooked Bunraku, he's avoided being pigeonholed as an action star, but he can absolutely hang with heavy-hitters like Chilean martial arts hero Marko Zaror (Mandrill, Redeemer, Machete Kills). Fight coordinators Balázs Lengyel and Brahim Chab, alongside their comrades in the stunt department Laszlo Kosa and Alain Moussi, have gory fun with some innovative and entertainingly imbecilic action sequences. Meanwhile the British flight crew gets to panic very politely as they dodge bullets and try to complete meal service.

If only Fight or Flight knew that what it does best is hectic mayhem then maybe it wouldn’t be such a bumpy ride. Much as Ke Huy Quan was fighting with one arm behind his back for the misguidedly mawkish Love Hurts, Fight or Flight just needed to roll with the action-comedy punches.