Official Trailer
Rating: 5.9/10 | Genre: Thriller | Runtime: 93 min
Starring: Djimon Hounsou, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Leigh-Ann Rose, Carolina Campos, Tegan Couchman
I went into The Passenger hoping for a tight, claustrophobic thriller. What I got was a movie that had one genuinely good idea but didn’t quite know what to do with it for 93 minutes.
Djimon Hounsou plays Hassan, an airport shuttle driver in Minneapolis who’s just trying to survive. He’s got bills, he’s got stress, and he’s got very little else going for him. When a young guy named Lloyd (Kodi Smit-McPhee) offers him serious cash to drive him overland to Chicago, Hassan takes the deal. But pretty quickly it becomes clear that Lloyd is not your average stranded traveler. He’s dangerous. And Hassan realizes he’s stuck in a car with someone who might hurt people if he tries to stop the drive.
The setup works. There’s real tension in that premise. A driver trapped with a threat. No way out without consequences. It’s Road Kill meets Speed, basically. And for the first 30 minutes or so, the movie actually delivers on that promise. Hounsou and Smit-McPhee have good chemistry, in the way that two people who absolutely should not trust each other but have to share space do.
The problem is what happens after that. The movie just kind of spins its wheels. Lloyd threatens Hassan. Hassan considers stopping. Lloyd makes it clear that stopping means innocent people get hurt. Hassan keeps driving. Repeat for another hour. There’s not enough character development to make you care deeply about either guy, and the plot doesn’t escalate the way it needs to. You keep waiting for something to shift, for the dynamic to change. It doesn’t really.
Smit-McPhee does his best with Lloyd, playing him as this unpredictable but ultimately one-note threat. He’s creepy, sure, but we don’t learn anything about him that makes the character interesting beyond “he’s a bad guy.” Hounsou is solid as always, but even his natural likability can’t save a script that keeps him reactive instead of proactive for most of the runtime.
The 93-minute runtime actually works against the movie. It feels padded, like scenes are held just a beat too long. A car ride thriller should feel tight, but this one feels loose. The dialogue doesn’t crackle. The tension doesn’t build consistently. You just kind of sit there waiting for the credits.
There’s one decent twist near the end that I won’t spoil, but it arrives too late to really change how you feel about what you’ve been watching. By that point you’re already checked out.
Look, The Passenger isn’t bad in the way that makes it fun to hate. It’s just… fine. It’s a movie that had potential and played it too safe. If you’re looking for a solid thriller to kill an evening, there are better options out there. But if you do watch it, at least you’ll get decent performances and a premise that works even if the execution doesn’t.
Have you seen it yet, or are you thinking about giving it a shot?
Where to Watch
Rent on: Apple TV Store, Google Play Movies, Fandango At Home, Plex