Yesterday I turned on Netflix and one of the recommended movies was Passengers. The 2016 Columbia Pictures release Starring Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt. Billed as Scifi romance thriller, I watched a few seconds of the trailer and figured I’d give it a shot.

We are aboard the passenger spaceship The Avelon. 5000 passengers aboard all in hibernation mode with the main computer running things. Ala Alien. 

About 30 years into the 120 year trip to the planet Homestead 2, the Avelon tracks through a debris field and suffers what appears to be just minor damage. But the damage leads to the accidental opening of a single cryo-pod.

Jim Preston (Chris Pratt) a passenger, not a crew member, is now awakened about 90 years too early. While life supports and basic passenger amenities are for the most part still working, Jim is completely alone with only a slightly damaged AI system. Much of the ship inaccessible to him. He cannot get back to cryo sleep, and any messages back to earth has decades worth of delay. 

Basically resigned to a solo 90 year death sentence, Jim starts to mentally breakdown, eventually resorting to opening another passenger’s pod for some kind of human companionship, but he does this under the guise of it also being a malfunction. 

Aurora Lane (Jennifer Lawrence) is now doomed to the 90 year long trip as well, and now the ship is starting to malfunction in other areas and systems. Of course Aurora also finds out her early awakening was not due to a malfunction. 

The way this movie was listed on the Netflix menu, It didn’t actually show who was in it until it started. I am always slightly concerned about 10 year old movies with full casts of bigger named actors that are in my genre (Sci fi) that I have never heard the slightest bit about. But I actually said to myself mid movie, wow these guys arnt bad in this.

For a basic thriller type of movie there was desperation, hope, sadness, frustration all rolled up in a tight little package. But that said. I’d say about 90% of the plot was exactly what you already knew was going to happen right from the second the initial accident happened. 

But Pratt made the descent of breakdown and his eventual moral decision believable and even Lawrence’s performance on both sides of that decision perfectly kept you pulled in.

We were not really given a whole lot of explanation of where and when we were, or even why we were on this trip. Nor did we get much for background of the characters. 

So you really needed to just go with the flow and not really wonder about why or how they knew how to do any of the technical things that they did, or how major plot points just seemingly happened just to happen for no reason other than to explain or fix another plot point.

But to the actors’ credits, because of their believability, I did do all that. It was more of a character mental study than anything, and because of pacing sequences, as soon as you started to think about it, the tone or plot changed and it just kept you pointing to the next thing, and that let me really get into it.   

If you would have told me, or I had seen the list of actors with Pratt and Lawence in the leads beforehand I really doubt I would have hit play. So I was absolutely surprised by how much I enjoyed Passengers. 

Is it groundbreaking cinema? No.

A mind bending thriller with unexpected twists and turns? Absolutely not. 

But it did grab my attention the entire 1:58 and I was thoroughly satisfied with just about everything. 

Plus it made me move both Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence slightly higher up on the scale.

I will say give Passengers (the 2016) a watch, and just run with it. I think you will be as surprised as I was.