
In a typical road movie, at least one of the two characters must appeal to the audience. Carter Smith’s “The Passenger” intricately disrupts this comfort as a means of personal disquiet. One character is Randy, a fast-food worker and a well-known pushover who would rather endure swallowing a day-old cheeseburger than standing up to a bully. The other is his co-worker, Benson, who massacres his co-workers in a burger joint but spares Randy because he makes him hide the bodies in the freezer.
The intricate character consistencies scream Blumhouse as the aforementioned is among the more likable contrivances about this project that is on the way toward the modern grindhouses of streaming. The sheer quantity of the film rides on the unexpected pairing of the characters after the deep appreciative opening sequence.
It is not about waiting for justice or that nonsense about becoming “a man”. Benson’s control over Randy on this drive is not exerted through some smart scheme, but through the palpable dominion Randy has surrendered. Benson does not need to worry about whether or not he is putting himself in danger using a phone around an open field. Deep down he knows that Randy will not defy him, will not call for assistance. Which he doesn’t.
Jack Stanley’s script plays with this tension quite a bit before the writers eventually run out of different ways to articulate their striking daringness. Nevertheless, it does have that character dynamic which is at a different level of exasperating which he pulls off beautifully. It is a sort of adult deconstructed who is as cowardly as one can imagine, yet another provocation from a story that seeks to put forth a more relatable psychological reality. Eventually, Randy does pout out to Benson for out reason he is such a wuss, but in the most polite way. Benson, too frustrated by Randy’s aggravating passiveness decides that he will help him take on the people he fears. The girlfriend who dumped him after the cat died and the teacher he half-blind accidentally in second grade.
The irony about these scenes is that the main spectacle comes from its two sets of performances of physical opposites. Berchtold barely moves when his captor shoves him and starts to convincingly cry without the tears flowing.
At the same time, Benson seems to be consistently calm, furious, and energetic and somehow manages to intersperse God only knows what with his short monologues, well, There is no need to carry this further, magic mass shooting has not been possessed unto Randy either.
“The Passenger” has plenty of pieces to assemble to make a coherent structure, but it does not have an overarching narrative, which makes the film’s ‘journey’ itself rather interesting. Lyn Moncrief, the cinematographer, has many remarkable compositions that creatively exploit negative space together with the increasingly enigmatic colors of the movie, which, in Eric Nagy’s editing, are given a bite where rather than smoothing them out he treats them like single proclamations of the soughing ideas of control, fear, and trauma. In my opinion, Smith’s direction is as if the movie is off-balance, like in the climactic diner scene where Benson midways through puts on the fluffy sweater, and a blast of neon purple light pours into the room.
While the movie does not polish off with a transcendental ending after the termination of the most chaotic route, making Galner itself fascinating in its display, this is an amazing display. While never inheriting the iconic smile, he possesses the comical fierceness of Jack Nicholson’s. You have also been offered the courtesy to meet Gallner.
Benson’s character is largely menacing, but Gallner does not exaggerate it as he seems to do when watching Benson’s character bending over Randy’s while he is meeting these two people who make him so scared from his past. Gallner has that kind of easiness in embracing the role; he can do so much else, as we have seen previously in his films, but with these kinds of constraints, he is a natural. With “The Passenger”, the future for Gallner projects roles that do not get Oscar awards, but roles that are far more interesting and courageous than that.
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