I bet you didn’t quite picture a blonde Josh Hartnett as an action hero, but given the man has played literally everything of late, including a psychopathic serial killer—in M. Night Shyamalan’s Trap—it shouldn’t come as a surprise. We’ve sort of been witnessing a career revival of the actor for the past few years, and if James Madigan’s Fight or Flight is anything to go by, then there’s no stopping the man. Hartnett is a scene-stealer in the movie, which isn’t anything that you haven’t seen before, but the bold, over-the-top approach does the trick here. Not to mention, the action choreography is pretty spectacular and extremely fun to watch if you’re an action junkie. In this article, we’re going to discuss the story of Fight or Flight and also the possibility of it getting a sequel. Let’s take off.
Spoilers Ahead
What is the movie about?
Hartnett plays disgraced Secret Service agent Lucas, who’s been hiding in Bangkok for the past two years due to a certain act of misconduct during service. It was a given that our hero would not be in the wrong, so no surprise when it was finally revealed the ‘misconduct’ was mercilessly beating a valuable diplomat who had a certain penchant for hurting young prostitutes. The man was also the brother of the CIA director, meaning Lucas was doomed the moment he touched him. Back in the present, Lucas’ ex, Katherine, aka Katie—who was also in the Secret Service but gave him up to further her own career—puts him on a mission. The assignment goes like this: Lucas has to board a San Francisco-bound flight from Bangkok and catch a terrorist who goes by the name of Ghost. Obviously, no one has ever seen Ghost, as there’s no footprint anywhere—be it digital or physical. Lucas’ mission is to hand Ghost over to Katie without a scratch. He’s not at all in the mood to take it on, but the possibility of finally becoming free and returning to America is too good to ignore. The movie does really great setting up things and getting into business—that starts from Lucas stepping inside the plane. Before going further, let me just touch upon all the supporting characters in the movie introduces; anxiety ridden agent Hunter, who works for Katie; two other relatively calm agents, Simmons and Robinson; and flight attendants Garret, Isha, and Rory.
Who Really Is Ghost?
Like I said, it’s the approach that makes all the difference here. I don’t think any of us were actually expecting the movie to reveal who ‘Ghost’ is too soon, but it drops the bomb, just like that. The narrative plays one trick, though, by introducing Cheyenne, who befriends Lucas and then tries to poison him. Turns out, he’s a bounty hunter who’s also looking for Ghost, and he’s not the only one. Apparently, a lot of powerful people know about Ghost being on the plane. And considering he has stolen from many of them or hurt them in different ways, they all want him dead. So Lucas now has a job ten times more difficult—he not only has to identify Ghost, but he also has to prevent the others from killing him. Well, it appears to be a ‘her’ actually, as in a manner of great twist, flight attendant Isha is revealed to be the one everyone is looking for. It is Lucas who’s smart enough to figure it out. Isha doesn’t seem to care much, though, at least initially. However, upon realizing the two of them actually need each other—him needing her alive to get his freedom back and her needing him to save her—they decide to work together. There aren’t other options anyway. While the movie breaks the usual conventions by making Ghost a young woman, it also doesn’t portray her as all bad.
Why is Lucas a target?
Giving your best card away, i.e., Isha is Ghost, puts Fight or Flight in a position where it must come up with more and more twists to keep the audience glued to the screen. It does that, but what makes it tick is the hypercool action. The introduction of Triad, a Thai gang, and the clan of Lian sisters—who are actually Isha’s allies—makes the narrative richer; it also offers the movie a lot of options to play with. What makes the stakes even higher is all the killers on the plane having a photo of Lucas, meaning he’s now on the hit list as well. That comes as a surprise to him, but it is actually Agent Hunter’s handiwork. Isha is not quite the villain here; in fact, it’s quite the opposite. She is a genius who’s actually doing everything in her power to stand up against a capitalist world that keeps exploiting the poor. More specifically, she wants to eradicate child slavery, which has a lot to do with her own past—she was trafficked when she was a kid.
Once it is established that who you thought to be the bad guy is actually one of the good ones, it becomes fairly simple. Greedy men like Hunter are probably the biggest problem in the world. He wants a device made by Isha that is infinitely more powerful than the greatest supercomputer, which practically means the one who has it can actually rule the world. The reason Hunter secretly puts the hit on Lucas is nothing personal; he just wants to eliminate Lucas from the scene, considering Lucas has a great sense of morality and is also an apparent psychopath who’s killing people on the plane. If everything goes right, Hunter gets the device with everyone on the plane dead, which effectively means he doesn’t have to pay a dime to anyone. Strangely enough, Katie seems to be on board with the whole thing—no wonder she didn’t once hesitate to give up Lucas. The movie’s exposition of this conspiracy is pretty much surface level, but it hardly matters, to be honest. Hunter’s plan is going to fail; we have seen enough movies to know that for sure.
Does Lucas get his freedom back?
It’s a no-brainer that someone like Lucas would never put someone like Isha in any danger, let alone handing her over to Katie just to get his freedom back. I suppose that was off the table for him the moment he got to know her truth. All that was left was taking care of business on the plane, which led to us experiencing one of the most fun long-drawn action sequences of recent times that has everything you can imagine—from guns to pocket knives to a freaking chainsaw (inarguably the best one). You might find Lucas accidentally getting high on toad venom in the middle of all this a bit extra, but that only amplified the experience, I would say.
Fight or Flight ends with Lucas expectedly blowing his ex off by not taking the deal. He then finds out the flight is not landing in San Francisco, as Isha was diverting its path all along. Lucas then loses consciousness (as a result of all the mayhem he had to handle), only to wake up in what seems like a makeshift hospital setup—with broken walls all around him. Before he can think of anything, the place is suddenly under attack. Isha comes out of nowhere, rescues him, and then delivers the good and bad news together—Lucas is very much alive, but whatever was going on is not at all over. This is an ending that makes a sequel a very obvious possibility; I really hope we get there in a year or two.
