On April 17, Josh Hartnett will be hitting the screens of Ukrainian cinemas to kick some serious ass in the comedy action film «Flight or Flight». And if Brad Pitt had to do the same thing almost three years ago in the mercenary-filled high-speed train Harnett, who also turned blond here, will have to make villainous faces in an even more dangerous airplane. As always, we suggest you find out what happened in the review below.
Pluses:
some well-choreographed and really funny action scenes; Josh Hartnett goes all out, and it's great;
Minuses:
For some reason, the on-screen madness is often interrupted by long conversations and pseudo-tweets, which makes you bored; the extremely bloody and gory final act spoils the overall impression;
«Flight or Flight»
Genre comedy action movie
Director James Madigan
Starring Josh Hartnett, Charitra Chandran, Julian Kostov, Katie Sackhoff, Marco Zaror, Rebecca Johnston
Premiere movie theaters
Year of issue 2025
Website IMDb
For the last few years, retired agent Lucas Reyes has been living in Bangkok with a bottle of hard liquor in his hand. One day, he is approached by his former boss and lover, Catherine Brant, with an offer to help with an urgent case in exchange for Reyes’ reinstatement. After a couple of standard refusals and wishes for the lady to go away, Lucas agrees and heads to the nearest airport.
There, the alcoholic will have to board a plane bound for San Francisco, detect a mysterious hacker known as «Ghost», and deliver him safely to Brant. It seems like a simple task, but it turns into a real challenge mission impossible, when it turns out that the flight is packed with thugs, and each of them has a photo of Reyes’ face on his phone.
After the success of «John Wick», which was Hollywood’s unspoken response to the Indonesian hit «The Raid», which was made for ridiculously low budget but was outstanding in terms of staging and filming of fight scenes. The genre has developed a trend towards inventive new wave action. That is, fight scenes have reached a new level, and now it is no longer enough to flaunt your oiled muscles in a Schwarzenegger’s manner and monotonously pound the faces of extras. For example still does the same Statham. Now, the viewer is served with an elaborate choreography of fights using all possible means at hand, while the camera literally circles around the fighters, and it is desirable that the editing glues are minimized.
So over the last decade, viewers have received a whole bunch of more or less successful action films, which appeared on the wave of success «John Wick» — «Atomic Blonde» (2017) with Charlize Theron, two parts «Evacuations» (2020, 2023, trilogy is under development) with Chris Hemsworth, «Nobody» (2021) with Bob Odenkirk, last year’s «Monkey Man» with Dev Patel, etc.
Not the least role in popularizing this kind of films was played by former stuntman David Leitch, who himself had a hand in the success of the immortal franchise with Keanu Reeves. He went a step further and tried to realize strong fight choreography and inventive mutilations in the realm of comedy. If Reeves’ character manages to beat someone to death with a book or finish them off with a pencil, why the hell not make it look like fun? And it was thanks to this lighthearted approach that the world saw «Bullet Train» — a skillful and absurd action movie in which stars of the caliber of Brad Pitt or Aaron Taylor-Johnson did not disdain to star.
The visual effects coordinator, and now debutant director James Madigan, is trying to follow in the same footsteps. Of course, he doesn’t have the resources that Leitch had, and the local stars Josh Hartnett, who flaunts a Brad Pitt-esque hairstyle from the «Ocean’s Eleven» era, and Kathy Sackhoff look much more modest. And even so, at the beginning, «Flight or Flight» makes quite a pleasant impression. It’s a pity that this enthusiasm didn’t last for the entire runtime. On the contrary, closer to the end, the viewer is confronted with a real mess.
When the game of conventional plotting comes to a head and Harnett’s character finally has to get down to business, it not only livens up the bland narrative, but also gives you a good laugh. Good dynamics here coexist with silly songs and physical comedy — again, all’s fair in battle and at least Lucas Reyes’ genitals will be in trouble. Or take, for example, the episodic pilots, which have already dreamed a little bit about the glory of Chesley Sullenberger, about whom Clint Eastwood made a reference movie starring Tom Hanks.
Unfortunately, the filmmakers couldn’t keep the whole movie in this style, or they simply didn’t want to. When the protagonist takes a hallucinogen and gets hold of a chainsaw, which is nothing more than an attempt to surprise the viewer with on-screen madness, the film finally turns into a ruthless trash. And this risks ruining the overall viewing experience.
The culminating showdown, backed by powerful hallucinations, is absolutely senseless violence for the sake of violence, with bloody excesses in the spirit of not just any «Boy Kills World» and the remake «Texas Chainsaw Massacre». The only difference is that in the helpless slasher about a deadly redneck, the massacre took place on a school bus, not an airplane. I’m sorry, gentlemen, but this is too much. In our Ukrainian realities, such «fun» is now perceived differently on a mental level.
The result is a rather convincing comedy violence that often gets distracted by the conventional plot (a few dialogues could have been cut), but by the end it slides into a silly bloody mess, when it becomes not funny at all.
We’re betting on transportation, where the next meeting of the ubiquitous mercenaries will take place. How about a spaceship?
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