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Passengers Our rating: Your rating: 1 2 3 4 Your Comments: see all MPAA rating: Not Rated (for thematic elements including some scary images, and sensuality) Genre: Drama, Thriller Theater release: October 24, 2008 by Sony Pictures Entertainment Directed by: Rodrigo Garcia Runtime: 1 hour 34 minutes Cast: Anne Hathaway (Claire Summers), Patrick Wilson (Eric), Andre Braugher (Perry), David Morse (Arkin), Dianne Wiest (Toni) Related: Talk About It/Family Corner

There is something deeply, damagingly conventional about Passengers, an obvious fact before the opening credits are even finished. But once this is recognized, there is no reason Passengers cannot be enjoyed in the same way that an episode of ABC's Lost might be. That is, as a small but entertaining exercise in twisty sci-fi indulgence.

Indeed, the similarities between Passengers and Lost are immense. Both are about mysterious plane crashes, the troubled post-crash lives of a small band of survivors, and some unexplained supernatural creepiness. Both have romance, violence, dead parent apparitions, and characters named Claire. In the end, though, Passengers is much simpler than any given episode of Lost, even if less stylishly rendered.

Passengers, directed by Rodrigo Garcia (Nine Lives, Things You Can Tell Just by Looking at Her), does not take place on a tropical island, but rather a dreary looking area of British Columbia. The film begins, predictably enough, with a plane crash, with a handful of survivors walking around dazed and bloodied amidst carnage and fire.

Anne Hathaway as Claire Summers

We then jump forward to subsequent weeks, after the survivors have returned to their normal lives, as therapist Claire Summers (Anne Hathaway) attempts to reach out and help these people cope with the trauma of being the sole survivors. Of course, the therapy does not go as planned. Passengers begin to go missing, new survivors come out of the woodwork, suspicious airline officials begin following Claire around, and one passenger seems all too gleeful about the whole experience. He is Eric (Patrick Wilson), a charming, handsome broker who lives in a cool bohemian loft where he has taken up abstract painting (apparently his way of dealing with the crash).

Eric refuses to go to group therapy sessions, but Claire—nice therapist that she is—agrees to meet with him one on one at his home. He proceeds to aggressively flirt with her while insisting that he not be "her patient," which (of course) paves the way for their inevitable sexual relationship. Lest the movie get lost in "Kate/Jack/Sawyer" soap opera gushiness, Passengers makes certain to keep up the mysteries, twists, and supernatural intrigue all the while.

Unsurprisingly, the film ends with a big twist, though it's not one of those "gotcha!" endings that is supposed to take us off guard and blow our minds. No, it's more like a twist that we probably see coming but which elevates the film and gives it a needed unifying logic. It's a twist that is more about emotional and thematic closure rather than shock value. In M. Night Shyamalan terms, it's more of a Village rather than Sixth Sense ending.

But this film's chief asset is not its ending. Its two leads—and their surprising and tender chemistry—are the best thing about this movie, and one of the main reasons it's watchable. Though the script by first-timer Ronnie Christensen is pretty clunky and amateurish (there is way too much talking that has no corresponding action), Hathaway and Wilson do their best with it. Hathaway—fresh off a career-defining performance in Rachel Getting Married—fits fine in the role of the confused, wide-eyed heroine, and Wilson is his typical charismatic self as the mysterious and endearing Eric. It's easy to see why their characters forge a bond and fall in love, and the scenes that show their relationship developing are the best in the film.

Claire and Eric (Patrick Wilson)

Indeed, it might have been better had Passengers stuck closer to the romance and left out some of the trippy supernatural bits. At times it seems like a film without a genre home, but then again, this is also the feeling one gets when watching Lost, and on that show it works. No, the real problem with Passengers is that it all just feels a bit ho-hum. The Claire/Eric relationship is nice enough, and at times there is a suitably ethereal—almost elegant—mood lent the film by its cinematography and understated music (Ed Shearmur). Credit should be given to Garcia for turning a sub-par script into a film that is a least somewhat aesthetically interesting, though from the director of something like Nine Lives—which is one of my favorite films of the last five years—I definitely expected greater things.

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