"The Pass" has commendable acting from everybody involved. William Forstyhe, James LeGros, Elizabeth Peña, Jamie Kennedy, Michael McKean and Nancy Allen are all kind of memorable in their roles. It's Kurt Voss writing and direction that makes this a forgettable experience but one that cannot be washed away from your memory so easily.
Here's another hitcher type flick destined to thrill you, kick you with some excitment but overall it's a messy disappointment because time and again the director/writer thinks he can fool audiences with ridiculious plot twists. That twist is what really kills the film, you'll be shaking your head is disbelief.
One simply does not treat your lead character as a complete loser of whom we don't care from the get-go because we don't know exactly the extent of his problems. When Charlie - Forsythe's character - is presented with a nice job of which he's lame since he spends his time gambling on the internet, and then has a marriage collapsing for no onvious reasons and thanks to the dull dialogue he has with wife I couldn't fill the blanks, I was too anxious for a change.
He gets it when a mysterious man (LeGros) needs a ride from him and the rest is all random murders and random encounters through highways when "our hero" is travelling all the way to Reno. That's when he finally realises he's not a loser, he's a fearless fighter and that's when the movie doesn't make any sense. A wimp that fights like a brave to the point of getting psychotical is insane; he became an action star after spending half of the movie being a white collar crying baby. And his only expertise was playing mini-golf!
Dream-like sequences, awful editing where you can easily spot goofs and inconsistencies permeates this nightmarish flick. The thrill is there, good action sequences such as the dog attack on the villain or the insanely disturbing moment of the duo with a state trooper makes it all interesting.
But if you need a more frightening and realistic PSA for dealing with hitchers, then "The Hitcher" (1986) is your film. "The Pass" is passable, embarassing and neither the good acting of Forsythe playing against type for most of the film deserves your attention. 2/10.