Josh Hartnett is first class in the otherwise dreadful action film Fight Or Flight

The film traps Josh Hartnett's character on a plane filled with assassins. It also traps a solid Josh Hartnett performance in a terrible movie.

By Chloe Walker | May 6, 2025 | 11:00am

Photo: Vertical Entertainment

Film Reviews Josh Hartnett

Josh Hartnett is first class in the otherwise dreadful action film Fight Or Flight

It’s a funny thing to be experiencing “difficult second movie syndrome” when you’ve made over 40 of them, but then, Josh Hartnett has had a funny career. After years in the relative wilderness, Hartnett’s terrific performance as the doting dad/serial killer in 2024’s Trap reintroduced audiences to a man who was leading back-to-back blockbusters 20 years earlier. That thriller, as a whole, got a mixed reception, but Harnett’s kinetic, dexterous, wildly entertaining performance was widely adored. His follow-up film is in similarly comedic-violent territory. While the gore level is far greater, the same cannot be said about any other aspect of Fight Or Flight.

Lucas Reyes (Hartnett) is an American ex-agent who’s been living in exile in Thailand after a shadowy event got him added to the no-fly list. He’s happy enough drinking his days away, until his former girlfriend/boss Katherine Brunt (Katee Sackhoff) offers him the chance to start his life over back home. All she asks of him is to board a plane from Bangkok to San Francisco, find “The Ghost,” and bring them in alive.

Most Popular

There are two problems. First, nobody knows what The Ghost looks like—the only clue to their identity is that they’ve recently acquired a gnarly gunshot wound. Second, because they’ve been behind numerous plots that have crippled the economies of very shady organizations, there are going to be an awful lot of assassins on this plane who want The Ghost dead.

It’s a decent set-up for an action movie: Bullet Train, but airborne. And indeed, the intrigue both around the identity of The Ghost and the identity of the assassins is enough to keep things interesting for a time. The first fight scene, which takes place after Lucas has been drugged by a sneaky seatmate, is brutal and gory in all the best ways, choreographed smartly, and cut so we can actually see what’s going on.

Soon after, though, things start to crumble.

A major selling point of Fight Or Flight is the promise of creative fight choreography in a cramped space, from which there’s no way for anyone to escape. In practice, however, as the fight sequences mount, their novelty falls. The downside of setting a movie in an inescapable location is that, with no possible change in geography to liven things up, there are only so many things that you can whack someone over the head with, or smash through their skull, before it all starts to get a little boring.

A wineglass through the eye is pretty gory, sure. But it also means that a later flare through the eye just doesn’t have the same effect. By the time the characters are throwing chainsaws at each other, it’s become eye-rollingly rote. There are no fresh ideas in Fight Or Flight, only various sharp objects and the concomitant fountains of blood. And once the characters start spending most of their time in the roomy cargo hold, the creativity required to negotiate the confined quarters isn’t even necessary anymore.

The diminishing returns of the action scenes would not be quite so ruinous if there was a serviceable plot, but there just isn’t. The secret around Lucas’ past is kept hidden at first, but the eventual reveal is predictable and ultimately unimportant. Katherine is painted with more than a hint of misogyny, and her on-the-ground drip-feed delivery of exposition is even more tedious than what’s going on in the air above her. Any pretense of narrative is insultingly thin—it’s the flimsiest of rails to hang all that bloodletting on. There are no stakes, and co-writers D.J. Cotrona and Brooks McLaren can’t even be bothered to pretend that there are.

Fight Or Flight has one thing working in its favor: Josh Hartnett. With the one-two punch of Trap and this, it seems like the actor has picked a lane for the second act of his career, and when he’s so good at it, it’s hard to blame him. Charismatic enough to drag the movie through its saggier sequences, physically imposing enough to present a threat in the action scenes, and comedically talented enough to pull off the particularly goofy bits, Hartnett is the one element that makes the whole thing bearable. Yet he still isn’t enough to make it enjoyable, at least in any sustained way.

Trap worked so well because, while the premise was totally outlandish, it was also creative and fun, and everyone involved was palpably invested in making it work. Bullet Train worked—at least, just about—because it actually bothered with character and plot, even if neither element stood up to much scrutiny. Fight Or Flight has Josh Hartnett and endless splattery fights on an enclosed mode of public transport, but that’s all it has.

When the time comes to land this plane, both literally and metaphorically, it’s no surprise that the movie forgoes any effort to resolve two major outstanding problems, and instead leaps straight to a staggeringly arrogant set-up for a sequel. If that ever does get off the ground, that’s one flight you’d be out of your mind to board.

Director: James Madigan
Writer: Brooks McLaren, D.J. Cotrona
Starring: Josh Hartnett, Charithra Chandran, Katee Sackhoff, Marko Zaror, Julian Kostov
Release Date: May 9, 2025