I hate to be a pain in the ass, but I must be honest. I found “The Passenger” to be a good film, not a great one. The internet is ablaze with raging Antonioni fans, many of whom claim this is his best work, but I much prefer La Notte, Blow-Up, or even, God help us, Zabriskie Point. There are two big annoying things about this movie. One is the rather unlikely plot machinations (gun runners?) that (literally) drive parts of this movie. The other is the flim stock. Blech. How is it that Red Desert, shot ten years earlier, has richer colors? (Between the bad stock and the occasional dips into plottiness one sometimes has to be reminded this is Antonioni and not Starsky and Hutch.) On the positive, when the scenes are workin’, they are really workin’. The whole first thirty or forty minutes is just spot on. And the famous last shot? The one they showed us in film school? I still don’t really understand how they did that.
