Overview
A mercenary takes on the job of tracking down a target on a plane but must protect her when they're surrounded by people trying to kill both of them.
The film opens with a chaotic frenzy on a plane as different groups of assassins warrant out bloody mayhem using anything to hand, including a chainsaw, and part of the fuselage blows out in the carnage, before the old trope of switching to “12 hours earlier” hits, which elicited the first of many sighs from this viewer as I realised that once again Sky Original was going to be as far from original as you can possibly get. What followed was a film so generic in set-up and design that I could have pulled out my Movie Cliches card game and scored maximum points on a random shuffle of the deck.
Josh Hartnett plays the washed out, drunkard Lucas Reyes, a mercenary desperate for work who is approached by an unnamed agency to bring in a cyber-terrorist known as The Ghost, who they have identified will be on a flight from Bangkok to San Francisco. However, once in flight it swiftly becomes clear that Lucas isn’t the only person with a vested interest in finding The Ghost, as it seems pretty much half of the passengers are hired assassins. Cue wild and erratic action sequences as the different parties fight…erm…on the flight.
Whilst the title of the film is clearly an attempted pun, they really should have called this Bullet Plane, as the similarities to that hyper-action-fuelled fun-fest are many – only this time with all the budget a Sky Original film can offer (ie: not much). Unlike that film, however, Fight or Flight doesn’t quite balance the fun carnage on display with the humour as effectively, and what we are left with is akin to the comparison between Pacific Rim and, say, Asylum’s Atlantic Rim. All the similar elements are there, only lacking the slickness of style that allow you to embrace the more cinematic film.
There are some positives, however. Hartnett is clearly having a fun time, and gives his all to the lead role, with a manic glee at times that is simply infectious. The action is fast and fun, even if the CGI touches to the carnage are a little overdone, and who doesn’t love a chainsaw fight in close quarters. But, in the end, this feels entirely disposable, and as the credits roll, with the film ending on a moment suggesting more to follow, you walk away swiftly forgetting anything of importance enough to make you care for another flight.
This is simply yet another Sky action film, albeit one of the better to come from their library, which doesn’t quite take off, and certainly doesn’t stick the landing.