The new airplane action movie Fight or Flight was an intriguing prospect for two reasons. It’s the first movie starring Josh Hartnett since the actor burst back onto the scene with a chilling performance in M. Night Shyamalan’s Trap, reintroducing himself as a movie star with his first lead role in a wide release since 2007’s 30 Days of Night. Additionally, it is the first produced screenplay credited to D.J. Cotrona (he co-wrote the movie with How It Ends‘ Brooks McLaren), who is better known as the superhero version of Pedro in the Shazam! movies.

Note that I did not mention the premise as one of the intriguing elements. That is because it feels very much like a carbon copy of 2022’s Bullet Train. It follows dissolute mercenary Lucas Reyes (Hartnett), who is on the run and offered a sH๏τ at redemption. He must capture one last target — The Ghost, a hacker whose idenтιтy is unknown but who has been traced to a flight traveling from Bangkok to San Francisco — and bring them in alive. The catch? The plane is chock-full of ᴀssᴀssins ᴅᴇᴀᴅ-set on wiping out The Ghost once and for all.

Fight Or Flight Is Ever So Slightly On The Right Side Of Formulaic

The Action Movie Has Bursts Of Cleverness

It is a personal adage of mine that being formulaic isn’t necessarily a demerit when it comes to making a genre movie. Few pleasures can compare to a genre formula that is being executed particularly well. It can be an exhilarating and satisfying experience. However, if such a formula is merely executed “well enough,” then that can lead to some of the most exhausting and tedious entries of the genre in question. Fight or Flight primarily falls into the latter camp, though it pushes the needle just far enough that it avoids becoming a slog.

Unfortunately, the lead character doesn’t help the movie stand out. The Josh Hartnett movie would certainly be worse if he wasn’t in it, but there is not a lot for him to dig into with Lucas Reyes, whose “drunkard with a heart of gold on a redemption arc” schtick is so rote that it barely registers. The same is true of his co-lead, the flight attendant Isha (Bridgerton‘s Charithra Chandran), who becomes a prominent part of the narrative once Lucas boards the plane.

The majority of the ᴀssᴀssins in the movie also fall prey to blandness. They are typical action movie weirdos with their own gimmicks, and their calling cards all feel like first-draft ideas (one of them has a clarinet?), several of which are pulling from a Hollywood starter pack of Asian stereotypes. Additionally, none of these killers are played by the type of A-list talent that really makes Bullet Train pop.

Fight Or Flight’s Best Moments Are Its Action Scenes

A Capable Leading Cast & Outrageous Fight Scenes Buoy The Movie

While the movie lacks the sheer star power of Bullet Train (a movie that it is impossible to stop comparing the single-location action-comedy to, no matter how hard one tries), the lead roles are all capably performed despite being locked into generic plot developments. In addition to Hartnett and Chandran having fun 30,000 feet up in the air, The Mandalorian‘s Katee Sackhoff and Shadow and Bone‘s Julian Kostov are chewing the scenery with aplomb as the pair of operatives on the ground who are responsible for feeding information up to Lucas.

The place where Fight or Flight really strikes gold is the action. While some of the fight scenes can feel stiff or over-rehearsed, they use every part of the plane to deliver chaos and destruction, from drink carts to armrests to seatbelts to overhead compartments and beyond. The filmmakers have found endless new ways to keep the many fight scenes fresh despite the limited nature of the movie’s setting.

The movie is also gleefully gory, doling out outrageous, bloody deaths to a huge heap of characters. While this might not count in the “pro” column for every viewer, as a longtime horror fan, I can ᴀssure gorehounds that there is a lot of fun to be had here. While the effects have their ever-so-slightly subpar digital moments, there are plenty of practical or satisfactorily CGI-sweetened effects to help the movie feel just grounded enough that the exaggerated nature of the action-comedy violence becomes quite striking.

While Fight or Flight isn’t exactly a huge step forward for the Hartnettaissance, he’s not going to take a hit from it, either. He has proven that he hasn’t lost his skills as an action lead, so hopefully the Trap star can soon find himself a new action movie character who is more worthy of his talents.