Cast: Anne Hathaway, Patrick Wilson, Dianne West, David Morse, Andre Braugher, Don Thompson, Chilah Horsdal, Stacy Grant; Director: Rodrigo Garcia; Producers: Joseph Drake, Nathan Kahane, Julie Lynn, Judd Payne, Matthew Rhodes, Keri Selig; Screenwriter: Ronnie Christensen; Music: Ed Shearmur; Editor: Thom Noble; Genre: Thriller/Romance; Cinematography: Igor Jadue-Lillo; Distributor: Tristan Pictures; Location: Vancouver, British Columbia; Running Time: 93 min.;Technical Assessment: 3
Moral Assessment: 3
CINEMA Rating: For mature viewers 18 and above
A plane crashes on a Vancouver beach with most of the one hundred passengers perishing. Claire Summers (Anne Hathaway), a young psycho-therapist, is asked to counsel the few survivors to help them cope with their near-death traumatic experiences. She meets the five of them in group therapy sessions but one of the survivors Eric (Patrick Wilson) refuses to join the group but insists on one-on-one home visits. He is hesitant to talk about the crash but feels reinvigorated with this second chance at life due to his miraculous survival. At least two of the survivors recall seeing a flash of light and a loud explosion before the crash. However, the investigators say the accident is due to pilot error. When her patients gradually disappear or fail to attend the sessions one by one, Claire senses an airline cover-up. Her relationship with Eric becomes more personal and Claire knows she violates her profession’s ethics, having crossed the ethical line with a patient. Some unusual, ominous things start to happen and Claire feels there is some mystery at the heart of things. What will Claire uncover?
In the ads promoting Passengers, the movie is compared to the Sixth Sense and Final Destination and so the spectators expect preternatural happenings and thrills. This could be misleading. Passengers offers very minor thrills, and practically no scares nor dramatic moments. The crash, the opening scene, sets the screen into some mild action, but after that, the film plods on and can be boringly slow with virtually nothing interesting happening. Some characters flit in out of the story like Toni (Dianne West), Claire’s kind neighbor. Then there is gradual romantic bonding between Claire and Eric as Claire begins to open up so that keeps the story progressing. The spectator may not know exactly where the story is heading but must be open to some mysterious climax. And in the last fifteen minutes, the director gives the story a surprising twist and ties up all the loose ends. Far from being a supernatural thriller, the film is a character piece. Anne Hathaway’s and Patrick Wilson’s adept performances are a plus for the film and so are those of some minor characters like Dianne West and Daniel Morse. The cinematography has helped build the dreary, spooky mood with its constant images of the palpable cold weather and dark overcast skies.
The film Passengers has a new slant on the “after-life” and like such films in the same genre, it affirms the fact that there is life after this earthly existence. The film suggests that somehow, the way we live our lives here on earth has some bearing on that other future life. Take Eric, a “survivor” who feels he has to do now what he had always wanted to do but did not, so now in his “present” moment he is in a frenzy of activities among them painting, motorcycle riding, swimming in the cold bay in the dead of night. Or Sharon, another “survivor” who has feelings of regret because somehow she had not been able to set things right with her parents who sort of abandoned her when she was very young. Or even Claire who had problems with her sister. Claire now wants to reach out to her sister and tell her how much Alice her sister meant to her. Probably the film may spur the spectator into a realization that in this short earthly life, there is much to value especially in our relationships with loved ones and others, and that we must choose to make these relationships beautiful, fulfilling and satisfying as we wish--while we still can.
