‘Fight or Flight’ Review: Josh Hartnett Is So Committed It Hurts in Bonkers (and Awesome) ‘John Wick’ Send-Up

Thank God for Josh Hartnett. We live in a deeply troubled world, so miserable lately that it’s hard to find the motivation to look out a window let alone watch a cheesy action movie. But Hartnett provides. The actor may not have written or directed the new high-octane, high altitude action-comedy “Fight or Flight” but it’s his put upon, simultaneously early-and-late era Daffy Duck energy that makes it soar.

“Fight or Flight” stars Hartnett as Lucas Reyes, a bedraggled cab driver, permanently hung over and sporting frosted tips in the year 2025, so you know he’s having a rough one. He gets a call from his ex-girlfriend and ex-boss Katherine Brunt (Katee Sackhoff), and she’s in a pickle. You see, Reyes used to work in the Secret Service before he got railroaded, and he’s been living on the run ever since. All he has to do is one quick job for Katherine and he’s got his old life back.

The problem is that this job sucks. Reyes is the only agent, or even ex-agent, currently on the ground in Bangkok, where an international terrorist named “The Ghost” is about to board an international flight. So now Reyes has to board the plane, figure out which passenger is The Ghost, arrest them and bring them back safely to the United States. Oh yeah, and there’s just one more wrinkle: Everyone in the world hates The Ghost, so they’ve got a huge bounty on their heads, and dozens of the passengers are secretly deadly assassins.

So basically “Fight or Flight” is “Snakes on a Plane,” if you replaced the snakes with homicidal maniacs, and if Samuel L. Jackson hated his life and kept drinking himself into oblivion. Director James Madigan, making his feature debut after years of Second Unit work on films like “Snake Eyes” and “The Meg,” gives himself a gift by shooting the movie on what appears to be the world’s largest plane, since there are always plenty of places to hide and you can beat the crap out of a guy and even shoot him without waking all the passengers up. Then again he’s giving the audience a gift as well, so let’s not quibble.

“Fight or Flight” crackles with manic energy, fed at every turn by exhilarating fight choreography and a thoroughly game cast. Hartnett carries the whole silly, bone-crunching enterprise masterfully. He looks like he’s always thinking, either solving problems or kicking himself for getting into them. He takes a licking, he keeps on ticking, patching himself up with Krazy Glue and gumption. By the time he’s hopped up on frog venom, slaughtering his way through the economy section with a chainsaw, it somehow plays like a natural extension of his character. Some bad days are just worse than others.

It is extremely important to point out that “Fight or Flight” is the kind of modestly-budgeted, low-expectation action movie that’s hard to get right. Madigan takes great care to modulate the fight scenes so when they careen into pandemonium it always hits hard, no matter how pandemonious the last fight was too. And although it quickly becomes clear that we’re living in Toon Town and the laws of reality do not always apply, it never stops hurting like the dickens to watch Hartnett’s body abused like a crash test dummy, and for elbows to snap all the way back in the wrong direction, like when your dad accidentally stepped on your old Erector Set.

And again, carrying it all is Hartnett, who doesn’t phone in one second of this movie. Hartnett had a major debut at the turn of the century, with memorable roles in films like “Halloween: H20” and “The Faculty” and “Black Hawk Down,” but for the last 15 years he struggled to get top flight material. But he is back, baby, top flighting and top fighting. Christopher Nolan wisely cast him in “Oppenheimer,” M. Night Shyamalan made him god’s favorite serial killer in the wickedly ingenious “Trap,” and now he’s got his own absurdist “John Wick.” (Well, more absurdist.) As a bonus, the understandable desire to watch Hartnett kick ass may lead audiences to discover the drastically under-appreciated martial arts-meets-puppet theater cult oddity “Bunraku,” and that can only be a good thing.

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