Returning from a girls-only vacation in Mexico, two friends find themselves at the airport with a lost suitcase and a great desire to return home as soon as possible. They decide to board an airport shuttle together with two young men they met while waiting to claim their luggage. A simple and safe journey back to their residences will turn out to be an endless nightmare at night.
If you thought that the main sources of danger on a trip could come from either flying in an airplane or from the hostility of the destination, Shuttle will make you reconsider that safety has no reason to exist even in a public service vehicle.
The incipit is also functional in this: wanting to provide a rather unusual starting point so as not to be too familiar to even the most experienced viewer. The film seems to declare war on all stereotypes and attempts, albeit with due reservations, to present us with a story that is as realistic as possible. Consistent with this goal, much attention has been paid to both the dialogue and the characterization of the main characters, with whom it is easy to empathize as events unfold.
After the introductory part at the airport, which serves mainly to introduce us to the various personalities, the film violently draws a clear line of separation with the previous narrative tranquility and does so by masterfully inserting an unexpected incident, as if to mark its horror identity and remind us that we are not watching a field trip movie.
This event furiously reignites the dynamics of events and awakening us from our torpor immediately throws us into a vortex of terror in which hostility will finally come to light and those who impersonate it will dispense with wearing masks of prettiness. Attempts to rebel against this condition will immediately be silenced and paid for with the dear price of life, and many favorable opportunities to reverse the roles between victims and perpetrators will be suppressed without any form of naivete or through some easy expedient.
Dispelling any form of uncertainty about how well the play will do is a twist that shows us how a superlative performance can really make a difference and convince us that one actor is not exactly worth the other.
At this point one might wonder what on earth this Shuttle will have something special to succeed in breaking away from the classic strand about the kidnapper-hostage duality. Well Anderson, director and sole screenwriter, starts with this elementary structure and tries to give it as many layers as possible, astutely touching on a serious problem, but one never dealt with in depth, which will serve as the final revelation in the poignant last sequence.
In order to arrive at this appreciable result, which will surely have been conceived well before he had in mind the process by which to get there, the author makes use of some less than agreeable techniques, and in this case the saying "the end justifies the means" does not apply.
Because of its vague claims of realism and social denunciation, the more purely splatter aspect is pushed aside without ever turning into real deprivation.
The photography unfortunately does not hide the paucity of capital at hand: the colors are dull and all tend toward gray. In short, the visual level does not do full justice to this work.
In conclusion Shuttle will be able to satisfy the most diverse palates thanks to the expertise in crossing multiple genres by sublimating them into a single product without any loss of quality.
Plus the ending will make you think a lot.
Review by Antonio D'Astoli
