‘The Passenger’ Review: A Harrowing Look At Toxic Masculinity
Between Swallowed from earlier this year and his newest film The Passenger, director Carter Smith has proved his ability to create terrifying yet touching portraits of male intimacy as its most grotesque. But with The Passenger, Smith looks not at sexual intimacy, but at male friendship and the strange forms it can take, especially in a patriarchal society. Smith’s film, directed from a beautiful script by Jack Stanley, is a complex look at the ways the world has failed young men and the ways they try to find love and compassion in destructive ways.
Randy (Johnny Berchtold) is an incredibly reserved guy who works at a local fast-food restaurant. He doesn’t have many friends and his mom is an overbearing force who just through the phone zaps Randy of all his energy. One day, when he talks back to a co-worker and refuses to defend himself, another co-worker Benson (Kyle Gallner) grabs a gun from his car and shoots their co-worker and his girlfriend. Benson tells Randy they have a few hours until the cops come, so let’s go for a drive. What follows is perhaps one of the most beautiful and heart-breaking road movies I’ve ever seen.
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Stanley’s script takes Benson and Randy from becoming incel stereotypes to more complex characters who both were failed in some way by the numerous systems that uphold toxic ideals of what it means to be a “man”. Benson is more than a rogue shooter, but a guy who knows he’ll never escape his fate, so why not try to make the best of his final hours? Yes, the film makes him sympathetic, but never really excuses his behavior. Benson by no means is a hero, but he is also given more depth than just a violent guy. Somehow, you almost fall in love with this young dude who really just wants to save Randy from the same fate. But the only way he knows how to do that is through violence and anger.
So often in cinema, male friendships are often played as jokes with all of the men being toxic predators or with no real depth at all. The Passenger is a drastic shift in that paradigm. While Randy and Benson only really spend one life-changing afternoon together, they are bonded not just by trauma but by a tentative yet exciting friendship that you can see through the initial terror of the situation. Is such a friendship well-advised? No, but The Passenger is never endorsing behavior. Rather, it more functions like a cautionary tale of sorts, of what happens when young men are ignored and silenced in the name of masculinity.
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Gallner’s performance as Benson is perfection. Gallner is a contemporary horror staple and here his acting chops really shine. In The Passenger, Gallner is really given the space to show off his emotional range and just how terrifying he can be, while also giving off a strange warmth. Berchtold is the perfect foil to Gallner’s chaos, a quiet, trembling form that you know is bubbling with rage. He is a figure of repression, what happens when you think turning yourself off from the world will keep you safe? But that silence can be just as destructive as outward rage, which Benson wants to prove, with his unorthodox and violent methods.
The Passenger is an example of the kind of filmmaking and stories that deserve to be told. Was it a risk for Blumhouse and MGM+? Absolutely. But in the perfectly capable hands of Smith and Stanley, this violent yet tender look at male friendships and breaking cycles speaks to the deeply ingrained issues of our patriarchal society. It’s a road movie but darker, a buddy comedy but without the comedy. The Passenger is one of the best and most beautiful films of 2023 so far, a crucial portrait of male platonic intimacy and violence in an increasingly bleak world.
Summary
The Passenger is one of the best and most beautiful films of 2023 so far, a crucial portrait of male platonic intimacy and violence in an increasingly bleak world.
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