An exiled American agent is given one last chance to redeem himself by capturing an elusive target known only as The Ghost on a flight from Bangkok to San Francisco. The mission turns deadly when the plane fills with assassins who want to kill them both. At 37,000 feet, the stakes have never been higher. A film by James Madigan, starring Josh Hartnett, Charithra Chandran, Marko Zaror, JuJu Chan Szeto, Julian Kostov, Sanjeev Kohli, Declan Baxter, Hughie O’Donnell, Danny Ashok, and Katee Sackhoff.

FIGHT or FLIGHT

James Madigan
(2025)
★★★½☆
 

Aaron Hunter (Julian Kostov) gets a text that sends him into a rage. He races down to the underground facility’s control room, where massive screens display footage of a devastating fire and explosion. When Hunter demands to know what happened, Kyle Robinson (Jyuddah Jaymes) tells him the footage came in ten minutes ago, but the explosion itself appears to have occurred several hours earlier.

Robinson pulls up additional footage showing a black ops team storming what appears to be a warehouse in Bangkok. The team members panic when they encounter Ghost, and their feed suddenly cuts to static. Robinson admits he wasn’t monitoring the operation because it wasn’t in their books.

While Robinson and everyone else in the room seem baffled by the footage of the botched black op and the team’s mention of “Ghost.” Hunter, however, knows exactly who they’re talking about. He explains that Ghost is a notorious black-hat terrorist who has single-handedly crashed the GDP of multiple countries, bankrupted a dozen Fortune 500 companies, and wiped out Yemen’s oil reserves. Despite leaving a trail of destruction around the globe, the Ghost remains completely elusive as no one has ever been able to figure out what he actually looks like. They don’t even know if the Ghost is male or female, though Hunter assumes it’s a man.

Just then, Agent Paul Simmons (Willem van der Vegt) spots an anomaly in the CCTV footage near the warehouse. It appears to be a brief static cloaking over a figure leaving the facility alive. Hunter immediately realizes this might be their only chance to capture Ghost. He stresses the critical importance of the mission, demanding they capture Ghost before Brunt, the head of security for Blue Hype, finds out about the incident.

Unbeknownst to them, Katherine Brunt (Katee Sackhoff) has been listening to the tail end of their conversation and decides to step in. When she asks why they can’t just send the Bangkok team to grab the Ghost, she learns that the Bangkok team was completely wiped out during an off-the-books operation. Hunter decides to activate their Singapore team since it’s their only option left. Brunt cuts him off, pointing out that the Singapore team is over an hour away. By the time they get there, the Ghost will be long gone. Tracking the Ghost’s movements from when he left the warehouse, Brunt figures out that he’s heading for the airport.

Running out of options, Katherine has no choice but to contact Lucas Reyes (Josh Hartnett), an exiled former Secret Service agent hiding in Bangkok. The film reveals a past between them, and Lucas holds a grudge against her for what she did, leaving him stranded in Thailand for two years. Katherine offers him a deal: she’ll help him get his life back and clear his name. All he has to do is get into a taxi and head to Bangkok International Airport, where a passport will be waiting for him. He must then take a high-value target into custody and bring them back to the United States unharmed. Frustrated, Lucas eventually gives in and accepts the job.

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I have no clue where they actually filmed the Bangkok scenes, but that definitely wasn’t Bangkok. While they got the taxi color right, the sign on top of the car was completely wrong. And wherever that taxi was supposed to be taking Lucas, it sure wasn’t Suvarnabhumi Airport!

Agent Simmons discovers from a dark web forum conversation that the Ghost is traveling from Bangkok to San Francisco. Katherine also spots the blood on the curbside in the CCTV footage and realizes Ghost has been shot, a detail that explains his delayed trip to the airport. Katherine relays all this information to Lucas, along with his boarding pass and credentials, emphasizing that he absolutely has to be on that flight. Even though they still don’t know what the Ghost looks like, Katherine tells Lucas to look for someone who’s bleeding.

After the plane takes off, Robinson uncovers unsettling new intel. The Ghost’s itinerary found on the dark web has been circulating globally, and a massive bounty has been placed on his head by every major Western nation, as well as the criminals and oligarchs he’s stolen from. Lucas’s mission turns deadly when it becomes clear that the plane is full of killers who are also hunting for the Ghost.

Directed by James Madigan in his directorial debut from a screenplay by Brooks McLaren and D.J. Cotrona, FIGHT or FLIGHT is an action comedy about a disgraced former Secret Service agent who is brought back from exile to deliver an elusive high-value target. His mission turns deadly when he realizes the plane is full of bounty hunters all after the same person.

The comedy elements come from the protagonist’s hilarious encounters with a plane full of killers and civilians. It seems the writers had a lot of fun creating an absurd cast of supporting characters, each one more ridiculous than the last. The humor pushes boundaries when the film introduces martial arts warrior Master Lian (JuJu Chan Szeto) and even a cat-eyed assassin (Nóra Trokán) who can hypnotize her victims.

While the villains are mostly amateur bounty hunters, the stakes feel low as Lucas easily overpowers his foes, even managing to withstand a sedative strong enough to take down a horse. Still, the film is entertaining to watch.

FIGHT or FLIGHT was released on Sky Cinema and NOW in the United Kingdom on 28 February 2025. The film had a limited theatrical release in the United States on 9 May.

Sky Cinema is a British subscription-based film service owned by Sky Group, a division of Comcast. It provides a wide range of movies through various Sky Cinema channels broadcast on Sky satellite and Virgin Media cable platforms in the UK and Ireland. Alongside linear channels, Sky Cinema offers extensive on-demand content accessible via Sky, Now TV, EE TV, and TalkTalk TV platforms.

Josh Hartnett Says He Was ‘Bruised from Head to Toe’ After Doing His Own Stunts in Fight or Flight
At a special screening of the film held at the AMC Lincoln Square Theater in New York City, the actor revealed he performed his own stunts in the movie, but it wasn’t always easy. The actor also details the process of physically preparing to take on the strenuous stunt work. “It was very, very full workout days leading up to this because it was nonstop. Once we started filming, we had five weeks to put the whole thing down, and there were seven big fight sequences.”

‘That Was Like a Miracle’: FIGHT or FLIGHT Director, James Madigan, Explains Casting Josh Hartnett
Everything about it was right up my alley. I really love comedy. I really love outrageous action. I really love something where you’ve got a great character to work with, who’s going to have to do a good bit of performing and go through different emotional states. It was just, in every way, exactly what I was looking for. I’m like, this is something that I can really have fun with. When I read the script, I then talked to the producer Basil Iwanyk, who does the John Wicks and Sicario and those kinds of things, and I sort of pitched him on the tone and the approach that I wanted to use. He was like Josh Hartnett might be interested. And that was like a miracle, because it’s not the person you expect to be in this role, and that brought something just really interesting to me. I didn’t want to just make a clone of the things out there that were that were selling. We wanted it to feel not like a clone of John Wick or these other things, which are amazing and I love, but if you’re trying to outdo them, you’re going to fail. You need to make your own movie, and it really had possibilities to to do that — to do something that was a little bit different. Especially with Josh and what he wanted to bring to it, there was a great opportunity for that.

‘Fight or Flight’ star Josh Hartnett wants to play ‘wilder characters’
Early in his career, Hartnett played a pilot in Pearl Harbor and real-life soldier Matthew Eversmann in Black Hawk Down, as well as partnering with Harrison Ford in the action comedy Hollywood Homicide. Hartnett said he has no interest in playing infallible heroes. Josh Hartnett says his new movie represents the direction he wants to take in his career. The actor plays Lucas Reyes, a mercenary called back into action to locate a target on a plane. FIGHT or FLIGHT filmed before last year’s TRAP, which cast Hartnett as a serial killer accompanying his daughter to a pop star’s concert.