Fight or Flight (2025) – Review

Quick thoughts:

• Grade – B
• I can now say that I’ve seen Josh Hartnett and action movie legend Marko Zaror fight each other in a swanky airplane bathroom.
•  Sporting a bleach-blond haircut, and a bulked-up frame that worked wonders for him in last year’s Trap. The 6’ 3” (1.91m) Hartnett towers over his opponents and believably holds his own.
• Charithra Chandran is cool.
• DP Matt Flannagan (The Raid, The Raid 2) knows how to film a fight.

Fight or Flight revolves around an ex-secret service agent and current alcoholic named Lucas Reyes (Josh Hartnett) being pulled from a Bangkok bar to track down a blackhat terrorist nicknamed “The Ghost.” Reyes was once a respectable secret service agent, but after some job-related violence, Interpol slapped a Red Notice on him and for two years he’s been hounded by cops, bounty hunters and criminals. In a good news, bad news situation, Reyes has gotten into so many fights that he’s become a Hawaiian-shirt-wearing weapon who sports a year-round black eye. To take it further, Reyes is such a badass that even with a failing liver and permanent dehydration he can still fight his way out of any bar in Bangkok.

To catch “The Ghost,” Reyes is put on a 16-hour international flight from Bangkok to San Francisco. To get on the flight, his handler Katherine Brunt (Katee Sackhoff) gets him new passports and promises him a clean slate if he can bring in the uber-hacker alive. The “fight” in Flight or Flight occurs when Reyes learns that there’s a bounty on the infamous hacker. This means Reyes has to hunt down a ghost and keep them alive when dozens of money-hungry assassins start attacking them on the double-decker A3 plane. An added wrinkle is that since he’s been drinking himself to death for two years, Reyes has to keep chugging miniature bottles of booze to prevent the mother of all withdrawal hangovers – which won’t help him when he’s battling five assassins in the aisles of the economy seating section. During the violent flight, Reyes teams up with flight attendant Isha (Charithra Chandran), who helps him scour the plane and dispatch various killers throughout the seemingly endless compartments. 

The highlights of Fight or Flight come from watching Harnett get stabbed, punched, shot, drugged, and loaded with toad venom. Sporting a bleach-blond haircut, and a bulked-up frame that worked wonders for him in last year’s Trap. The 6’ 3” (1.91m) Hartnett towers over his opponents and believably holds his own against action movie legend Marko Zaror (watch Fist of the Condor – it rules). In interviews, Harnett said that he had a great time doing his own stunts and he had a blast playing a badass alcoholic who has consumed so many intoxicants that attempts to drug him aren’t successful (you can’t pickle a pickle). 

Directed by James Madigan, who is no stranger to action scenes because he’s worked as the second unit director on See, Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, Snake Eyes, The Meg, and G.I. Joe Retaliation. His background with visual effects and shooting action scenes allows Fight or Flight to stretch its budget so it can go all-out on the chaos. The cinematography from Matt Flannagan (The Raid, The Raid, Merantu, Havoc, Gangs of London) is self-assured and understands the movements and structure of each brawl. Flannagan has worked on some of the best action films of the 21st century, which means the fight coverage is solid and the various brawls aren’t edited into oblivion. The highlight of the film is a bathroom fight between Hartnett and Marko Zaror. It’s a brutal affair loaded with broken glass, spin kicks and brain matter being stuck to the ceiling of the spacious bathroom. 

The high-concept script from writers Brooks McLaren and D.J. Cotrona is inspired, and despite there being way too much plot and far too many characters, the 97 minutes fly by.