FIGHT OR FLIGHT

Name: FIGHT OR FLIGHT
Item: FIGHT OR FLIGHT
Author: Review

"37,000 Feet Up and Nowhere to Go"

Family Content: -3 Excessive sex, violence, immorality, and/or worldview problems. (Sometimes excessive content such as violence is in otherwise redemptive movies.)

Entertainment Quality:

	None	Light	Moderate	Heavy
Language
Violence
Sex
Nudity

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What You Need To Know:

FLIGHT OR FIGHT is an intense action comedy. Lucas is a former secret service agent who killed a high-ranking government official for beating up a prostitute. His ex, Katherine, turned the FBI against him, and he’s been running ever since. Years later, Katherine offers Lucas his freedom if he’ll help capture Ghost, a hacker who’s disrupting the government social media app she directs. To complete the mission, Lucas boards a plane Ghost is taking, only to discover it’s full of assassins. To survive, Lucas teams up with Ghost, who turns out to be a young woman.

FLIGHT OR FIGHT is definitely attention-grabbing, between the punchy musical score, comical camerawork, and non-stop action. The characters are colorful, but not well-developed or believable. Also, the conclusion is sloppy and fails to answer the question of the whole story, how the two heroes survived such a deadly flight? FLIGHT OR FIGHT has a moral worldview about fighting child trafficking rings and protecting people’s privacy from an abusive social media app. However, it has lots of strong foul language, extreme violence and strong alcohol and drug abuse.

Content:

(B, Acap, AP, Fe, FR, LLL, VVV, S, NN, AAA, DDD, MMM):

Dominant Worldview and Other Worldview Content/Elements:

Light moral worldview where hero helps a woman on a crusade to fight for the freedom of trafficked children, and they fight against a corrupt social media app designed to abuse people’s privacy for illicit gain, but this is accomplished through intensely immoral acts of violence and espionage where the ends justify the means and anything goes, any emotional damage the main characters incur from this choice of life is softened by substance abuse which is portrayed in a charming or comedic light, some light anti-capitalist elements such as all of the first-class passengers being ruthless assassins while the handful of innocent civilians in the story’s setting are less wealthy, light anti-patriotic content where the American government and high-ranking federal agents are all particularly corrupt and cutthroat characters, light feminist elements with many women in positions of power and frequent acknowledgement by other characters of how ironic it is that the most gifted character is a woman instead of a man, and two scenes where an undefined pagan meditation practice is seen (and criticized by the villains);

Foul Language:

At least 64 “f” words, 15 “s” words, multiple other obscenities, four GD profanities, eight light profanities, and two examples of vomiting;

Violence:

Lots of very strong and strong, almost-constant examples of graphic violence as a plane full of assassins use many and varied means to destroy one another such as a chainsaw massacre scene, one character shot in the eye with a flare gun, people poisoned, strangulations, numerous scenes featuring characters’ heads getting bludgeoned, throats slit, one character is sucked out of a plane, a room full of people are gunned down with a hail of bullets, the camera is close on the face of one villain as another shoots him in the back of the head from the background, both main characters suffer mortal abdomen wounds, the main character spends more than half the movie covered in other people’s blood, the beating of a prostitute is mentioned and heard but not seen, and one assassin spends a prolonged amount of time attacking the main character’s privates to gain the upper hand in a fight;

Sex:

Child sex trafficking is implied and discussed, a prostitute is alluded to and there’s a brief glimpse of the prostitute’s mistreatment by an FBI official when the hero finds them;

Nudity:

Partial female nudity when the main character walks in on the mistreatment of a prostitute, both male and female characters with abdomen wounds lift their shirts for treatment;

Alcohol Use:

Heavy alcohol abuse, the main character drinks everything from beer to medicinal alcohol to champagne between each one of the movie’s frequent battles, and is clearly trying to get drunk, though he appears to have a high tolerance for any substance;

Smoking and/or Drug Use and Abuse:

Heavy drug abuse, the main character is introduced by smoking a cigarette and later takes what he thinks is adrenaline but turns out to be toad venom and spends one fight sequence hallucinating and is asked if he’s high, female villain takes medicinal marijuana when stressed, and drinks are drugged on two occasions with sedatives or poison;

Miscellaneous Immorality:

Very strong immorality throughout the movie, every single character lies, every single character except one is out for their own gain, the main character is betrayed by his girlfriend and then blackmailed by her into life-threatening situations, she later betrays another business partner, the villains are part of a government branch but are using a social media app to steal the privacy of civilians, two civilian pilots hear passengers are being murdered but make light of it and are content to protect themselves, the main character is called “insane” and “a monster” for brutally killing a sex-offender but otherwise violence is made light of or treated comedically throughout the story, a high-ranking government official hires a prostitute and then abuses that prostitute, child slavery is mentioned, and female villain describes herself as willing to sell her own child to get ahead and double-crosses her boyfriend to get what she wants.

More Detail:

FIGHT OR FLIGHT is a bloody action comedy about a disgraced secret service agent named Lucas who is promised freedom from his crimes if he can capture a powerful hacker called “Ghost” aboard a commercial flight. It turns out, he’s not the only one who stands to gain from stopping Ghost; the plane is full of assassins. Lucas and the hacker team up to survive, but when it turns out Ghost has a moral reason for her actions, Lucas must choose between continuing to flee the consequences of his past or fighting for what’s right.

At the beginning of FIGHT OR FLIGHT, Lucas loses his temper with a sex-offender on the job, gets betrayed by his ex, Katherine, and runs from some bounty hunters. Lucas is tired, and ready to do anything for his freedom. Katherine and her government-sanctioned organization offer Lucas a pardon. All he has to do is capture a mysterious female hacker, “Ghost,” mid-flight to Philadelphia. However, Luas and Ghost’s identities are leaked to the other passengers, who are assassins out to kill Ghost and anyone in their way.

Lucas convinces Ghost, a handful of the flight crew, and Ghost’s three bodyguards to team up, since he needs to bring her in alive, anyway. He learns that Ghost was once a child-trafficking victim and is on a mission to disrupt the world’s social media technology to save others from the horrors she underwent. Making matters more complicated, both Lucas and Ghost are severely injured by the time the plane enters Philadelphia airspace. While they battle to survive, Lucas must decide whether to turn over Ghost to escape his past actions, or spend his life fighting for the freedom of others.

FIGHT OR FLIGHT is definitely a movie that succeeds in grabbing viewers’ attention. It is fast-paced and uses unexpected camera perspectives and quirky fight choreography to keep viewers on the edges of their seats, despite the limited setting of an airplane. The main character has a natural appeal. Also, Josh Hartnell’s performance as Lucas is funny but charming enough to keep viewers rooting for Lucas through every high-adrenaline fight scene.

Sadly, however, FIGHT OR FLIGHT’s character connections are too muddied to be very inspiring. For example, Lucas tells Ghost she’s freed him when he chooses to help her escape instead of turning her in to the authoirites. However, Lucas’ efforts to protect her do not result in any freedom, either shown or implied, for the child-trafficking victims they were trying to save, let alone freedom from his constant on-the-run lifestyle. Also, Ghost not only is a gifted hacker, she’s also able to defend herself, and even employs an entourage of female martial-arts warriors to protect her. So, there’s no real reason why she needs Lucas’ protection or his sacrifice in the first place. This makes it difficult to connect with the stakes each character faces. These decisions weaken the impact of Lucas’ decision to fight for something rather than run from his serious problems.

The movie’s conclusion is also very unsatisfying. At the end of the movie, the main characters are each suffering from mortal wounds. The pilots are dead, and they miss their landing strip. However, the main character conveniently passes out, then wakes up with his wounds cared for, and Ghost fully recovered, safely on the ground and preparing to defend against an unknown threat. In a story centered on surviving a deadly flight, a cliffhanger conclusion that doesn’t show how the characters made it off the plane safely leaves a lot to be desired.

The conclusion isn’t the only example of missing information, either. Ghost goes from demonstrably not caring what happens to Lucas to being willing to sacrifice her life for him with little development of their relationship. At the beginning of their partnership, it’s presented as if he will be her one, begrudging defender, but then her unmentioned, but apparently fiercely dedicated bodyguards show up to join the fray without any explanation of where they were four fight-scenes ago. Although the villains are from a corrupt social-media company and a negative light is shone on technology, Ghost’s own freedom and heroic plan are a result of her gifts with technology.

FIGHT OR FLIGHT has a pair of main characters who ultimately battle to uphold a moral worldview, with each wanting to stop child trafficking and protect the privacy of civilians. However, the amount of violence in the movie is extreme, graphic and non-stop. It includes both a chainsaw and machine-gun massacre, impaling, strangling, neck-snapping, bludgeoning, throat-slitting and poisoning. This is echoed by the excessively strong language every character uses in nearly every line of dialogue. There is also a scene of partial female nudity and multiple examples of drug and alcohol abuse. Added to this is the fact that all characters except one are engaging in violence, betrayal and manipulation to get ahead for the entire movie, with government officials being the most corrupt.

FIGHT OR FLIGHT is a comedy, but most of the jokes center on violence. Also, Lucas and Ghost might be trying to eventually prevent child slavery, but the ends certainly don’t justify the graphic means. The movie includes constant lying, stealing, brief partial nudity, substance abuse, extreme violence, and lots of strong foul language. For these reasons, MOVIEGUIDE® finds FLIGHT OR FLIGHT excessive.

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Quality:

- Content: +1

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