R | 1h 42m | Comedy, Drama, Action, Thriller | 2025
For the first quarter century of his career, actor Josh Hartnett starred in one atrocious movie after another. His taste in material was almost as bad as his acting skills. He’s handsome in a boy-next-door sort of way, but exhibits zero presence or distinct personality.
When he was lucky enough to appear in good films (“The Virgin Suicides,” “Black Hawk Down,” “Sin City,” “Oh Lucy!”), Hartnett still managed to deliver mostly wooden and stilted performances.
Everything changed for Hartnett in 2023 when Christopher Nolan cast him in “Oppenheimer” playing Nobel prize-winning physicist Ernest Lawrence. It was a supporting role, but key to the overall story. Hartnett shone brightly, and he more than held his own throughout.
In 2024, Hartnett was the lead in “Trap,” where he played a serial killer who, for a good deal of the time, was actually sympathetic. When not sympathetic, his character was palpably dangerous, something hidden behind a thin veneer of inauthentic charm.
This week, Hartnett makes it three winners in a row. He plays lead character Lucas Reyes in first-time feature director James Madigan’s no-holds-barred action comedy thriller, “Fight or Flight” (“Flight”).
‘The Blue Danube’
The movie’s cold opening is a bloody gang brawl on an airplane with the Johann Strauss II’s “The Blue Danube” waltz playing in the foreground, a cheeky nod to both “2001: A Space Odyssey” and “Kingsman: The Secret Service.” The scene lasts less than 30 seconds. It ends with the text “12 hours earlier” and cuts to Hunter (Julian Kostov) receiving bad news on his smart phone.Angry and spewing profanities, Hunter quickly boards an elevator that goes 30 stories underground. There, black op subordinates inform him of yet another espionage attack carried out by the “Ghost,” an unknown super hacker out to bring down misbehaving global corporations.
Low on options to apprehend the Ghost, Hunter’s superior Katherine Brunt (Katee Sackhoff) reluctantly contacts Reyes, a former Secret Service agent; Reyes turned mercenary living in the bottom of a bottle in Bangkok. All sharp angles, high cheekbones, angry eyewear, and a severe hairdo, Brunt has a complicated history with Reyes. Once romantically as well as professionally involved, they haven’t had contact in over two years.
Where Is the Ghost?
Brunt is pained to admit it, but Reyes is the least terrible option she has in order to stop the Ghost. All she knows is that the hacker will be aboard a flight leaving in minutes from Bangkok to San Francisco. Brunt makes many high-stake assurances in order to get Reyes to take the job.Once on the plane and with little to go on, Reyes begins trying to ID the Ghost. But there’s a big catch. Word has spread quickly on the dark net that the Ghost is on the plane, and dozens of would-be global bounty hunters are also onboard. This is where “Flight” begins to resemble “Con Air,” “Bullet Train,” the “John Wick” and “Kill Bill” franchises, and most of Guy Ritchie’s back catalogue.
Reyes finds an unwitting ally in Isha (Charithra Chandran), an initially perky flight attendant who quickly develops an attitude and has an interesting skill set.
Echoing U.N.C.L.E.
I’m dinging the movie a full star because of the ending. Exhibiting the same type of overconfidence present in Ritchie’s “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.” (2015), “Flight” concludes with a standalone scene which more than promises a sequel.I thoroughly loved “U.N.C.L.E.” and was certain there would be a sequel. However, most audiences didn’t agree. If you factor in the twisted method of “Hollywood Accounting,” the studio (Warner Bros.) scrapped any and all plans for a follow-up. The budget to box office take was too slim.
Let’s just hope the filmmakers didn’t already jinx a possible sequel by getting too far ahead of their skis.
