Another Dose of Compliance

 

In this (deadly doll's) house, we celebrate the work of Kyle Gallner. 

Pay your respects and hop in.

Quick Plot: At 21 years old, Randy Bradley hasn't done much with his life. He quietly toils away at a dour burger joint where nobody even knows his first name. His pride gets a minor boost with the tease of a managerial promotion, but the moment he uses it to stand up to a jerk of a coworker, it all tumbles down. 

Being humiliated is one thing. Randy is used to it. Benson is not. 

Played by the always great Kyle Gallner, Benson is the kind of guy you don't notice. Older than the teenagers around him but seemingly even less ambitious, his presence barely registers until it explodes into a shooting spree, sparing only the terrified Randy Bradley.

Written by Jack Stanley and directed by Carter Smith, The Passenger is a fascinating film that toys with genre conventions in ways that constantly make the viewer wonder exactly what they're supposed to be feeling. Is Benson a mere homicidal sociopath or Randy's guardian angel? 

It's a more complicated question than you could possibly imagine. Randy, played beautifully by Johnny Berchtold, has his reasons for living in a whisper, but Benson is right in some regards: he does deserve to give himself more. But Randy is also a good enough person to see past Benson's Tyler Durden-y philosophizing for its own inconsistency.

Having recently rewatched The Ruins, I can now enthusiastically throw myself on the Carter Smith train. The Passenger is a completely different film in terms of story and tone, but when you put them together, you can see so many of Smith's unique strengths as a genre director, particularly in how he's able to draw such real but deeply layered characters without much exposition or background. He seems to have a genuine human touch with his work, and that goes a long way when exploring something horrific.

High Points

For such a lean film, there's quite a lot going on in terms of what's driving our characters, but with the setup The Passenger has, it's still fascinating that the primary story at the heart of the film is how Randy Bradley has spent the bulk of his life in the smallest way possible because of such an understandable guilt over having hurt someone. It's not the kind of emotion that would normally get this kind of treatment

Low Points

I don't know that I have any real complaints about The Passenger, so why not use this space to ask a question that always makes me mad: why isn't Kyle Gallner a bigger star? 

Lessons Learned

It takes a lot of energy to hate a seven year old

Fast food has far more character than a food court

Even the smallest public elementary school needs better security training for office staff

Rent/Bury/Buy

The Passenger is not a fun watch, but it's a beautifully done challenge of a film that explores some very human issues. Don't go in lightly, but do go in.