Better than Expected, in Unexpected Ways

Rating: 7/10 (5 March 2017)

After seeing many lukewarm or negative reviews, I watched Passengers with low expectations. Having seen it, I'm aware of its logical shortcomings. But overall, I liked it a lot - for reasons I really never expected.
At its core, this is not an adventure - it's a very unusual love story. It's about a love born of disaster, desperation and even heinous selfishness. And yet, it's a love that we come to appreciate as the story slowly unfolds. This film works remarkably well on a dramatic level. The two stars are extremely likable, and do a fine job of presenting a wide range of emotions, despite the limited scope of the story. (There are also a few smaller parts that work very well - notably the mechanized bartender.)
Even more surprisingly, Passengers succeeds in evoking that bona fide SF 'sense of wonder,' as we contemplate the lives of two people living alone on a huge starship, while 5,000 others remain inaccessible in hibernation. It's a fascinating vision, depicted quite powerfully.
On a purely mechanical level, the results are somewhat more mixed. The film does look terrific. The starship is elegant and believable. But the film's respect for real-world physics, on the other hand, hits both highs and lows.
On the up side, there are several maneuvers in zero gravity that are really quite clever, handled infinitely better than we've seen in such critically-acclaimed dreck as Gravity (which also lacked the powerful emotional side of Passengers). On the down side, we have a ship that loses centrifugal gravity by suddenly ceasing to spin. Not only is there no reason for it to stop spinning, we don't see the horrible carnage that inertia would create inside the ship after a sudden stop. There's also a scene with fusion plasma that's needlessly implausible, not so much because of poor physics, as because of lazy writing.
On balance, however, the scientific underpinnings are more than adequate to carry the film's genuinely compelling drama. Ignore the few inevitable quibbles, and Passnegers works really well as both SF and romance. It leaves you with some novel insights into human nature, and a genuinely haunting central image.
I have to deduct a point or two on the technical side, but even so I give the film a very strong recommendation. It's entertaining, likable and thought-provoking, and I will definitely watch it again.