Chocks away for Hartnett’s Bullet Train in the sky.

It’s a good thing air travel is statistically the safest way to travel because if Fight or Flight were even remotely realistic, nobody would ever board a plane again. Josh Hartnett, rocking a peroxide blonde look that lands somewhere between midlife crisis and tactical disguise, plays Lucas Reyes, a mercenary with the kind of haunted past that only ever leads to movie-friendly trouble. Dragged out of drunken exile and tasked with apprehending a target known as ‘Ghost’ on an intercontinental flight, Reyes finds himself trapped in a metal tube with a rogues’ gallery of assassins, all vying to complete their own secret missions. It’s pretty much Bullet Train at 35,000 feet – everyone’s got a hidden agenda, some have scores to settle and nobody’s walking off this flight without a few bruises.

Hartnett slips back into off-kilter action hero mode with an ease that suggests he should’ve been doing this more often over the past decade and makes a pleasing counterpoint to his recent turn as a serial killer in Trap. He’s rugged but weary, just the right amount of grizzled to sell the idea that he’s both dangerous and in way over his head. Charithra Chandran’s Isha, an early ally in amidst the unfolding mayhem adds a cool factor, playing her cards close to the chest and keeping just enough mystery intact to keep the main plot simmering amidst the action sequences. On the ground, genre favourite Katee Sackhoff will please a very specific subsection of the audience as Katherine Brunt, Reyes’ former handler, a woman who radiates the kind of no-nonsense command authority that usually costs extra and is accompanied with the sound of a whip snapping. Her parallel subplot provides regular breaks from the airborne antics, essential to maintain the credibility of the momentum, although it perhaps jumps through one too many switchback double-crosses for its own good.

Director James Madigan, making the jump from visual effects (RED 2, The Divergent Series: Insurgent) and second unit (The Meg, Snake Eyes: GI Joe Origins) to the director’s chair, knows his way around a spectacle. The fight sequences feel tactile, the confined setting used to full effect. Limbs, weapons, and entire bodies are flung into bulkheads with satisfying impact. Marko Zaror, a scene-stealer in John Wick: Chapter 4‘s near-endless Battle of the Sacré-Cœur steps, turns up here to dish out some brutality, and the film is better for it. The action, for the most part, carries just enough weight to avoid the floaty, over-choreographed feel that plagues lesser entries in the genre, and leans gleefully into a more psychedelic approach just as the standard splatter effects start to get a bit stale.

The screenplay from Brooks McLaren and D.J. Cotrona isn’t here to subvert expectations – it’s here to keep the turbulence high and the in-flight entertainment relentless. It gestures vaguely at ideas of redemption, blurred moral lines, and a wider-worldbuilding conflict but the real appeal lies in its commitment to throwing wave after wave of combatants at Hartnett and seeing how many make it to landing. Dialogue is functional, sometimes sparky, occasionally clunky, but mostly serves as the connective tissue between fights, shootouts, and the occasional moment of decompression before another row of economy-class seats gets obliterated.

Fight or Flight doesn’t push boundaries, but it understands exactly what it is: a stripped-down, claustrophobic tongue-firmly-in-cheek action thriller that keeps its fists clenched and its pacing tight. It’s not rewriting the rules of airborne mayhem, but it’s a sturdy entry into the ‘Die Hard on a…’ subgenre. And honestly, Hartnett throwing down against a plane full of killers is a solid enough premise to justify a watch on its own.