PASSENGERS

After a mysterious plane crash, the few survivors are entrusted to the psychological care of young Claire Summers. However, the group sessions go on with many difficulties and the patients' contradictions lead Claire to believe that there is a cover-up strategy by the airline regarding the disaster. Among the various patients, Eric, an introverted boy who refuses to participate in the meetings and with whom Claire develops a strong romantic bond, attracts the psychiatrist's attention. However, Claire's patients begin to mysteriously disappear, and the girl decides to investigate the matter thoroughly. There is nothing worse in a film that builds on the final twist than predictability. "Passengers – Mystery at High Altitude" is the classic mystery created directly from the end, a bit like some detective stories where the culprit and his motive are first thought of and then a story and an investigation are sewn around it. Only the endpoint of "Passengers" is a bit the starting point of the standard viewer who has behind him a fairly substantial cinematic baggage who is about to watch a film of the genre with a minimum of awareness. Director Rodrigo Garcia and screenwriter Ronnie Christensen therefore miss the target by several meters, but the failure of a thriller like "Passengers" is not solely attributable to the serious flaw of predictability, but brings together a host of other glaring flaws. Let's start by saying that the film has completely off-beat timing. The story takes far too long to get started, to the point that for about fifty minutes it is even difficult to trace a narrative thread, but it proceeds with the criterion of accumulating small redundant and often irrelevant events for the economy of the narrative. From that moment, the film timidly decides to come out into the open, but, to the perplexity of the public who went to see "Mystery at High Altitude," "Passengers" turns out to be a little engaging romantic story between doctor and patient, with all the crumbs that derive from his trauma and her professional deontology torments. When it is already too late, it is widely understood that "the heart does not command" and the film is about to reach 90 minutes, it is remembered that there is a tangle linked to a "mystery" to unravel, and then, in a too hasty and unlikely way, the register is changed by sticking to the whole that pre-made ending that on some occasion even clashes with the "logic." Therefore, the fluctuating pace is felt too much and above all the hesitation with which the core of the story is reached provides a "stretched broth" sensation that is quite annoying. The small investigative parentheses are all damned weak and uninvolving, as well as the elements of conspiracy appear all forced and unbelievable. It is a shame, then, that the director completely neglected the pathos that in a film with a thriller soul is anyway indispensable, also to keep the viewer's interest alive (and "Passengers" in particular would have needed it), in order to insert in a almost ridiculous way some "bus" with the intent to make the viewer jump from the chair unmotivated. The first-rate cast appears decidedly wasted in a forgettable little film like this. In the leading roles are Anne Hathaway ("The Devil Wears Prada"; "Bride Wars") and Patrick Wilson ("Hard Candy"; "Watchmen"), zealous but visibly little convinced the first and completely lost the second; while in supporting roles appear David Morse ("The Green Mile"; "Disturbia"), Andre Braugher ("The Mist"; "Live!"), the little-used Clea Duvall ("The Grudge"; "Zodiac") and Dianne Wiest ("Lost Boys"; "My Name is Sam"). The direction of the television Rodrigo Garcia (lots of apprenticeship in "Carnivale" and "Six Feet Under") is cold and detached, as is the viewer involved in the viewing of this film. In conclusion, "Passengers" is a film wrong from the start, unable to capture the viewer's attention, highly predictable and even superficial in dealing with the themes it addresses. It is not excluded that someone in the mood for new age romanticism may appreciate it, but the memory it can trace is as thin as the thread of a spider's web.