Went in skeptical ... and was pleasantly surprised.

Rating: 8/10 (5 April 2017)

I selected Passengers at the nearby RedBox last afternoon on my lunch break while thinking: Oh well, maybe it's worth the two hours and the buck-sixty-one. The wife wanted a suspense movie after all the March Madness basketball. It was certainly worth the time investment and the nominal rental fee.
To be honest, I wasn't expecting too much; was just anticipating an ultra-saccharine (to the point of goo-goo), explosion-filled, mindless violence, dumb-plotted space flick. I actually planned on snoozing halfway through it (had to get up early the next morning). Boy were we pleasantly surprised. However, I would have added these lines of dialogue between the main characters:
A: Wow! So, this is it. This will be our life - just me and you on this spaceship - from now until our in-transit deaths.
J: I promise to stay interesting for you.
A: For another forty to fifty years? Don't put so much pressure on yourself.
J: We can make this an epic, one of a kind, novel-worthy experience - for posterity. You'll become even more famous.
A: Hard to cash those royalty checks with stiff fingers.
OK, just my two cents. My suggested screenplay revisions always end up catching dust.
As for the ending, well, yes, we could see it coming. That's where I knocked off a couple of stars. A great opportunity wanked.
Disclosure: I'm not the biggest sci-fi fan, but I can truly appreciate a well-crafted, plausible, smart, sometime-in-the-future story ... and Passengers is one of them. I loved the lack of extraneous violence and unnecessary action scenes. It often felt very much like computer-controlled, automated, long-distance space travel would most likely feel: quiet with a lot of time to think ... maybe too much.