Customer Reviews

Passengers

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An interesting horror/thriller which slipped under the radar despite starring Anne Hathaway, Passengers is directed by Rodrigo García and follows the increasingly disturbing life of a grief counselor (Hathaway) working with a group of plane-crash survivors (including Patrick Wilson, Dianne Weist and David Morse), who finds herself drawn into a dangerous mystery when her clients begin to disappear without explanation. The score for Passengers is by Edward Shearmur, who has spent most of 2008 inexplicably scoring a series of crappy comedies - College Road Trip, Meet Bill - which are significantly beneath a man of his talents. Musically, Passengers is a world away from the heady heights Shearmur attained on Reign of Fire and Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, which seem like they were written generations ago. There's a definite Thomas Newman vibe running through a great deal of the score, from the way Shearmur uses his strings in echoing clusters, to the generally muted emotional content, to the bright, lightly percussive suburban writing and prancing rhythms that appear in cues like "Group Therapy", "House Call", "What Do You Remember", and others. Parts of the score are actually very attractive in a moody, slightly sinister way: the opening of "The Wreckage" has a distant, slightly lost sound to it, and "Arkin" has an introspective, ghostly piano line which is chillingly effective. Things warm up considerably during "Motorcycle Fix", "Porch" and "Epiphany", and come to an emotional head during the lovely "At Peace", which is by far the most emotionally satisfying piece on the album. A few of the other cues have a slightly grungy contemporary sound through the use of growling electric guitars, notably "Norman", while one of two cues raise the tempo a little and begin to edge into action territory, such as "Norman's House" and "Eric Remembers". Overall, though, this is an enjoyable but definitely minor effort from Shearmur, professional and slick but never offering anything new to the genre, or to his own filmography. Shearmur's career needs to start taking an up-swing, and soon.

Passengers is what I like to refer to as "small" film; intimate with a strong story line, filled with actors who are truly devoted to their craft, where the film is typically underrated and certainly under the radar. The story about passengers involved in an airplane crash and how they come to deal with their own reckoning, the film is beautifully acted by Patrick Wilson [always superb], Anne Hathaway [truly natural and believable in this dramatic role], Andre Braugher [who shows entirely different side to his acting from his days as a Baltimore cop], the usually and ever slightly mischievous Dianne Wiest, and David Morse [a fine actor whose sympathetic role on St. Elsewhere garnered him deserved attention], who straddles that difficult line between the defensively unapologetic pilot and the frustratingly sympathetic side of his personna while denying to Claire what has happened to the passengers.

The film hit me in unexpected ways; the somewhat atypical story line is not so much of a thriller as it is an eerie path leading to what we begin to suspect happens to the passengers and what is revealed near the end. This elegiac score is the backdrop against which the story takes place. Some tracks are written with tighter, faster rhythms, yet the instrumentation reflects the scenes for which they're written. The film and its score are haunting and they end with a majestic theme that seems to ask, or possibly to answer, questions we have about the hereafter, almost making the outcome seem hopeful for those seeking to be comforted. For me, the score was emotional without any sentimentality.

While this is not nearly as thorough a review as Jon Broxton's, where his obvious knowledge about film scores and Shearmur's work allow him to be much more critical in his assessment of this and other Shearmur scores, this review is written more in response to the film and score themselves without having to consider those other factors.

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I saw this movie on cable a couple times but never caught it at the beginning. Once I did I found the movie very interesting and like The Sixth Sense and Vanilla Sky had a surprise ending that you had to pay close attention to detail that gave you the little clues on what was really happening.
This is an excellent movie and I fell in love with the soundtrack and bouht it while the credits were rolling. If you love synthesizers with a great mixture of percussion mixed with a variety of instruments you will love the soundtrack. The movie was awesome and watch it over and over it is that good. Great performances by Anne Hathaway, Patrick Wilson and David Morse. Truly a stunner at the end but your good with it during the credits.