Fight or Flight
Plot
Katherine Brunt is a top ranking agent in the government, who discovers a tech terrorist called “the ghost” is catching a plane from Bangkok to San Francisco.
She calls disgraced former Secret Service Agent Lucas Reyes who lives in Bangkok due to a past incident to assist. He must board the flight (only after having his ‘no fly’ ban abolished), find ‘the ghost’ and escort them back to the states to stand trial.
He gets on the plane, and quickly discovers that “the ghost” is the 28 year old flight attendant Isha, who is in control of a computer that can break into any secure device on the planet.
Now, a plan full of assassins are trying to find The Ghost, but Lucas must get her to safety – even though he now has a bounty on his head too.
Direction
Directorial debut from James Madigan.
It is fun, colourful, loud, with great action sequences and choreography.
Cast Characters
Joshua Hartnett plays Lucas,
Charithra Chandran plays Isha/The Ghost
Katee Sackhoff plays Katherine.
Breakdown
An easy to watch popcorn thriller has a paper thin plot, but you’re not watching a movie like this to think too much. When a character is cutting up (bad) people with a chainsaw while a plane breaks apart (and tripping on a mysterious drug) – you know that its not trying to be taken seriously.
Hartnett is in his resurgence era – having been in films like Oppenheimer and Trap in the last few years. Here he is having a great time (and mirroring the previously action overboard film bullet train’s lead Brad Pitt).
The action starts early – with a zany bathroom flight in a tiny airplane bathroom. After this, it doesn’t let up with so many fights between Lucas and all the different groups after him and the Ghost. The score that goes with these fights is fun too – but if I’m going to be picky… they do get somewhat repetitive after a while.
The ghost is revealed early, which I thought was going to ruin the reveal,but she needed to be revealed early to know about why she is doing all the cyber crime she has done. The reveal she is not actually during ‘terrorist’ actions, but trying to save the unfortunate – and only going after the evil corporations.
I didn’t feel the need to have a “past” with Lucas and Katherine (especially since they don’t even share a scene together face to face). For a movie that has this much graphic violence – I felt the coarse language was overused too.
Overall
What a fun ride – Josh Hartnett has a blast playing the hero. The action is fun and (possibly overdone) – but who’s going to really complain too much about getting too much of something.
Some downs, there is the cliche the hero and his boss used to be an item (which is just thrown in the script for good measure), and did it need that much swearing?
A strong recommend however.
4/5
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