With a century of both cinema and aviation under our belts, it’s hard to believe that it took humanity this long to come up with an airplane thriller called “Fight or Flight.” But cinephiles everywhere can rest easy knowing that the arrival of the lowest hanging fruit since “Bullet Train” delivers enormous quantities of fighting onboard a moving passenger jet.
James Madigan’s feature directorial debut exists in a self-contained bubble of government competence that’s oddly comforting right now. An unnamed American intelligence agency oversees the world with staggering precision, never allowing a nefarious actor to elude its vision for too long. And while they have eyes on countless bad guys, one name towers above the rest: The Ghost. Nobody has ever managed to put a face on this anonymous cyber burglar, but the wreckage left from their multitude of hacking jobs has made them a lot of enemies.
From crypto heists and identity theft to the remote destruction of entire factories, The Ghost demonstrates singular computer hacking skills and a merciless greed that leaves no nation or organized crime syndicate unscathed. And the Dark Web just got a tip that they’re getting on a flight from Bangkok to San Francisco.
The agency’s ruthless director Katherine Brunt (Katee Sackhoff) realizes this might be her only shot at catching her white whale, but her roster of immediately available mercenaries in Bangkok is limited. She’s forced to swallow her pride and call Lucas Reyes (Josh Hartnett), a disgraced former Secret Service agent who just happens to be her ex-boyfriend. Unable to leave Bangkok since Katherine placed him on a no-fly list out of spite, the once-great agent has become content to slowly drink himself to death among Thai locals who pity him. But Katherine gives him a final shot at redemption if he can board the flight (complete with the valid passport she had made for him in 37 minutes) and ensure The Ghost gets to San Francisco unharmed.
Lucas is not exactly thrilled with the proposition. He’s spent years steeping in anger at Katherine over the life she stole from him, and he didn’t expect their first conversation since the breakup to involve her asking for a favor. But with nothing to lose and everything to gain, the anxious drunk makes his way to the airport and prepares for the toughest flight of his life. It turns out Katherine wasn’t the only person tracing the Dark Web for The Ghost’s whereabouts, and the double-decker luxury jet is filled with assassins around the world, eager to collect the $10 million bounty on their head. If Lucas wants a prayer of getting his old life back, he’ll have to kill every last one of them before they land at SFO.
“Fight or Flight” milks its high-concept premise for everything it’s worth, giving us a compelling protagonist with everything on the line and then hitting him with endless complications. Hartnett eagerly dives into the role of the erratic loser, donning the bougie pajamas given to first-class customers as he fends off assailants using every weapon and combat method under the sun. It’s a clever script — even if “Flight Risk” remains the best contained aerial thriller of 2025 — and co-writers Brooks McLaren and D.J. Cotrona deserve credit for crafting a setup that gets us to buy into their ridiculous premise. In short, the film‘s first two-thirds are a rowdy good time.
The film’s biggest strength is its writing, but it hits some real turbulence when the combat takes center stage. The action sequences devolve into pure camp, leaning into the reality of the film’s low budget by relying too heavily on cheesy cinematography and unconvincing special effects. By the time a chainsaw inexplicably materializes, it’s clear that the film has fully embraced its status as a B-movie.
Maybe that’s OK, as “Flight Risk” never strives to offer anything more than mindless escapism. If nothing else, it joins “Trap” in an expanding canon of mid-career Josh Hartnett movies that are memorable for their utter ridiculousness. And perhaps we all ought to be grateful that a film that promised us fighting or flight had the generosity to deliver on both.
Grade: C+
A Vertical release, “Fight or Flight” opens in theaters on Friday, May 9.
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