Fight or Flight (2024)

You know what’s curious about James Madigan’s directorial debut? It shouldn’t work. Not really. Fight or Flight is built from spare parts of better films, yet somehow manages to taxi down the runway and actually take off.

The setup reads like action movie paint-by-numbers. Josh Hartnett is Lucas Reyes, disgraced spy gets one last chance, must identify mysterious hacker called “The Ghost” on commercial flight. Standard stuff. But then the plane fills up with professional killers from around the globe, each armed with their own bounty contracts, and suddenly we’re in full Snakes on a Plane territory. Except with more stabbing.

Hartnett surprised me. After his recent foray into prestige cinema with Oppenheimer, watching him chainsaw through aircraft seating feels like career whiplash. But he commits entirely to the madness. His Lucas copes with the escalating violence by ingesting enough pharmaceutical assistance to stock a small pharmacy, which leads to some genuinely striking visual sequences where brutal reality becomes psychedelic fantasy. These moments work better than they have any right to. There’s something unsettling about how we process trauma through chemical filters these days.

The confined setting turns philosophical without meaning to. Strip people of social norms at cruising altitude, trap them in a metal tube with nowhere to run, and watch civilisation evaporate. The international cast of assassins becomes a twisted metaphor for globalised violence, where death transcends borders and becomes just another market commodity.

Brahim Chab’s fight choreography deserves particular credit. The action feels visceral and immediate, shot with the kind of clarity that’s become frustratingly rare in modern action cinema. No shaky-cam nonsense or epilepsy-inducing quick cuts.

The supporting cast, though? They exist mainly to advance plot points. Budget constraints show through the cracks occasionally, particularly in some command centre scenes that look suspiciously like someone’s garage with extra monitors.

But honestly? Fight or Flight earns its modest success by understanding exactly what it is. Unpretentious, ridiculous, surprisingly crafted junk food.