At The Movies: Thrills and spills in Fight Or Flight, Another Simple Favor
At The Movies: Thrills and spills in Fight Or Flight, Another Simple Favor
Fight Or Flight (M18)
102 minutes, opens on May 15
★★★☆☆
The story: Disgraced former Secret Service agent Lucas Reyes (Josh Hartnett) has a shot at redemption, when tapped by his ex-boss (Katee Sackhoff) for a mission: He is to track down a mysterious cyber terrorist known as 'The Ghost' on an international flight and take him or her into custody back to the United States. Turns out just about every passenger on-board is a crazed assassin after this high-value asset.
Is no transportation safe any longer? Fight Or Flight is Brad Pitt's Bullet Train (2022) at 37,000 feet .
The airborne action comedy is absurdly entertaining despite the familiar concept, its violence so nuts, the only response is to laugh. Barely has the seatbelt sign been switched off and a skull is skewered, grey matter splattered across the first-class toilet.
And speaking of seatbelt, it is repurposed for strangling. Arms are snapped, ribs are crushed by meal trolleys and an eye speared by a broken champagne flute once the international mercenaries leap from their seats to begin competing for their bounty.
This is not the sort of movie to ask how a chainsaw got past airport security. The more immediate concern is Lucas having to keep both himself and his target alive.
Director James Madigan, a visual effects artist, innovates with brio the close-quarters skirmishes in the pressurised cabins, and Hartnett has mischievous fun as the bleach-blond wash-up in airline pyjamas still capable of holding his own.
He finds a reluctant ally in a feisty air stewardess played by Charithra Chandran (Bridgerton, 2020 to present).
A befuddled pair of co-pilots and three Shaolin nuns are also in the teeming ensemble, few among them surviving beyond one scene.
Hot take: From the producers of John Wick (2014). Which is to say, it is a bonkers romp.
Another Simple Favor (M18)
122 minutes, available on Prime Video
★★★☆☆
Anna Kendrick in Another Simple Favor.
PHOTO: PRIME VIDEO
The story: Stephanie Smothers (Anna Kendrick) and Emily Nelson (Blake Lively) reunite on the Italian island of Capri for Emily's destination wedding to a handsome mafia scion (Michele Morrone). Beneath the sun-splashed extravagance lurks danger because the bride is a psychopath, surely again up to no good.
In the 2018 American noir caper A Simple Favor, widowed single mum Stephanie investigated the disappearance of glamorous Emily and discovered her new best friend from their sons' elementary school had killed her long-lost twin and staged her own death.
Seven years later, in Another Simple Favour, Emily is out of prison and Stephanie is a mummy vlogger amateur sleuth.
The latter has written a memoir, although reading it to acquaint oneself with the backstory will not help make sense of the convolutions in this knowingly trashy melodrama dressed up as a luxurious travelogue.
Emily's dotty mother (Elizabeth Perkins), a shifty aunt (Allison Janney) and Emily's ex (Henry Golding) are the other guests arrived at the resort. Stephanie soon finds herself framed for multiple murders. Is this why Emily invited her here to be bridesmaid, to take delayed revenge?
There are secrets, betrayals, fake identities, a mafia war and one too many incident of sibling incest even for an improviser of farcical vulgarities like Paul Feig.
The Hollywood director of Bridesmaids (2011) and the girl-powered Ghostbusters (2016) has returned for another female-centric comedy, and the fabulous frenemies – perky Kendrick versus Lively's slippery, manipulative vamp in runway couture – are perhaps reason enough for a sequel, however wearying the endless plot twists.
In their byplay, at once flirtatious and a veiled threat, lies all the intrigue.
Hot take: Their barbed banter is a treat as Kendrick and Lively talk themselves out of a nonsense frolic.
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