The Passenger

It is one of those very risky pieces of virtuosity which tend inevitably to distract the mind to questions of how it's done; but it's still beautiful.

It is essentially an internal drama traversing a moral hinterland whose only real location is the soul. And its triumph is that, in externalising this troubled journey, the film so seldom trivialises it.

The Passenger is almost a masterpiece. Almost? That's because the plot, a thrillerish tangle about swapped identity in a menacing foreign country, begs for the pen of Patricia Highsmith.

…as well as one of Jack Nicholson’s most underplayed, naturalistic performances, The Passenger has complex layers of meaning to unravel…Antonioni elevates this movie to art with some remarkable flourishes in a grounded, realistic narrative….