The Passenger
Normally I give a quick synopsis of the film to open these. But with this one its best to watch the trailer first and then read the review below.
From seeing a little bit of the trailer for The Passenger I expected this road movie thriller where the characters each go on this epic journey that is kinetic and not so static or simple. It is an intimate film which I was not expecting. But there is this imbalance between the violence of the film and where it goes dramatically. It wasn’t necessary for the violence to be there to propel the main character Randy (Johnny Berchtold) and to incite this groundbreaking change for the rest of his life. Based on the structure of the film and who Randy ends up confronting in order to face his past having a straight dramatic throughline without the violence would’ve served the story in a stronger way.
Randy ends up confronting two different people with the final one being the most important. But there is no build up towards this final person at all. The first one is an ex-girlfriend and then the last one is a former teacher. There is not enough substantial dialogue between Benson (Kyle Gallner) and Randy at all to carry the film. Randy is shut down emotionally which is understandable, but at the same time he needed his own personality and meaningful dialogue. As a result, his performance and character become repetitive. The majority of meaningful dialogue is coming from Benson in the form of his own philosophy about what changes Randy needs to make and what is wrong with society at large along with their small midwestern town which at its core is still very simplistic. But also, the dialogue in a lot of scenes is just moving us from point a to point b in terms of moving the plot forward so everything is at the surface.
Ultimately it is a dull film with powerful themes on not letting past mistakes define the trajectory of who you are and your life as a whole. But again, due to the decision to utilize violence as the engine to propel the film forward, the poor dialogue, and weak performances by a variety of supporting cast members ultimately made the film dry and one note when there were supposed to be so many more layers for viewers to really connect to the material in a meaningful way.
The Passenger is streaming on MGM+.