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**/**** starring Josh Hartnett, Charithra Chandran, Marko Zaror, Katee Sackhoff written by Brooks McLaren & D.J. Cotrona directed by James Madigan
by Walter Chaw I remember the thrill I felt when I heard the premise: a plane full of murderers is freed to go hog on one another with impunity. Maniacs and assassins, right? Hannibal Lecters and spree killers and cons and bounty hunters. Fuck, I thought, it’s gonna be like one of those Universal Monsters “rally” movies where Frankenstein fights the Wolf Man or some shit; imagine the possibilities! The mayhem! I remember it like it was yesterday because it was 1997, and when you get old, things that happened almost 30 years ago seem like they happened the day before. Man, oh man, it’s good to talk. Anyway, James Madigan’s Fight or Flight is about a plane full of murderers who go hog on one another with impunity. It’s got the same frenetic energy as David Leitch’s Bullet Train, which is about a train full of murderers who go hog on one another with impunity. To be fair, Leitch’s film is centred around a handsome white guy with a secret everyone is after, whereas Fight or Flight hinges on a handsome white guy everyone is after but there’s also a young woman (Charithra Chandran) who is more than she seems. No, wait, that’s Bullet Train, too.
And speaking of Bullet Train, Fight or Flight (whoa, wait, Bullet Train 2: Fight or Flight is a super-cool title!) was probably called Bullet Plane at some point in its development–the second entry in a trilogy that will conclude with Bullet Automobiles and end with an AI John Candy being invited to Thanksgiving with Steve Martin’s family, who are a car full of murderers freed to go hog on one another over a cherished national holiday. Where’s my development deal, Sony? I have ideas about Human Vampire movies, and bills to pay. I’m sorry–Fight or Flight. It doesn’t matter if a film is derivative, because, as they say, there’s nothing new under the sun. Walter Hill insists there are only two stories–The Odyssey and the Passion–and Joseph Campbell said essentially the same. Fight or Flight is like every other action movie right now, and good for Fight or Flight. Own it, girl. It stars Josh Hartnett as a retired hitman in the geezer-teaser tradition, pulled back into service to locate a mysterious figure called “The Ghost” and escort them safely to the United States on a flight dense with criminals. Who? What? Where? When? How? All will be painstakingly answered for you in the course of 100 minutes, my friends, but the question that will remain unanswered is “why.” Because why not, yes? Why the fuck not? Once Lucas (Hartnett) and these snakes on a plane reach cruising altitude, they start whaling on each other in various vaguely racist fighting styles, using an armoury of weapons and a workshop full of tools.
I liked a scene where Lucas, hopped up on toad venom, hallucinates a Technicolor rainbow when he sticks a pickaxe into someone’s head, and I like Hartnett a lot because he seems like a decent sort who enjoys his work. For the rest of it, I don’t know what to judge except how it’s competently made and paced, an all-around workmanlike product that would stand if it were a shed, quietly moldering while breeding a million generations of wasps and mice for a hundred years. Not a bad legacy in terms of sheer numbers, in other words, though if your immortality is measured in volumes of reliable infestations of vermin and malevolence, maybe it’s time to aim higher. There might be something to be made of how Fight or Flight is also the umpteenth scion of John Woo’s heroic bloodshed era–some substance to worry in a post-9/11 America that has made getting onto an airplane one of the most byzantine of public exercises (while buying assault rifles to shoot toddlers is as easy as ordering DoorDash). I could perhaps conjure another extended screed to once again talk about desensitization as satire, but truthfully? I got nothing. Fight or Flight is slapstick diversion cinema in which all the creativity is reserved for the “coolest” way to kill a human being… Oh. That’s interesting, huh?
