The Terminal

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I have spent too many hours in airports not to have anticipated the very clever idea of a man trapped in an airport as a movie plot. But, a clever idea is almost where the plot of The Terminal terminates. With an A-list cast, including: Tom Hanks as Viktor Navorski, Catherine Zeta-Jones as flight attendant Amelia, the ever wonderful Stanley Tucci as the antagonist, Frank Dixon the story soars on credible acting, but descends rapidly by pandering to self-indulgent sentimentalism and too many directions.

Viktor is a traveler from the fictional country of Krakozhia. He becomes trapped in the international terminal, at a New York city airport, when a coup in his native country invalidates his passport. During this same period Frank Dixon, a mid-level bureaucrat, is anticipating his dreamed-of, well-deserved promotion to Airport Manager. The conflict between these two mounts in proportion to the pace of the movie but never completes a satisfying arc. By the end of the movie Frank seems to become just another fan of Viktor’s, and we’re left wondering why we watched the struggle between these two for 128 minutes.

Along the way ... Amelia gets in the way. This is the never-ending love story that never needed to be. I’m not sure why this was thrown into what stands alone as a good premise, other than the Hollywood penchant to throw the kitchen-sink at the audience using major star attachments. By the end of the movie I found myself wishing that Amelia’s story were different, because it never really goes anywhere. It’s one of the few times I have ever felt that the movie would have been better if the boy won the heart of the girl.

Stephen Spielberg has surely produced better films than this, but the classic characteristic’s of his work are present and provide for a comfortable if not totally engaging ride. It is clean with excellent attention to detail and character movement. The set direction is the best money can buy as an entire terminal was manufactured for the film. With just the faintest of recollection we are harkened back to the earlier Spielberg, the director that provided the heart of such great films as ET. But, this is not that strong a story-line, and a break on the heartstring-tugger should have been a consideration.

What really inspires this piece is the performance of Hanks. The fact that he learns English in less than a couple of days is forgiven while he bumbles through the airport living on free soda-crackers and packets of mustard and catsup. Early on, when he learns of the coup in his country on the airport television, his panic and grief are translated easily, and this, the most touching scene in the film, brings back memory’s of 9/11. Another role, that of Gupta, an aging airport janitor, is played superbly by Kumar Pallana who nearly steals the show with this role of man who has been trapped, many years, in the same airport for an entirely different reason.

If you wish that M&M’s had another layer of sugarcoating or that all cakes were six-layer instead of three, this might be the movie for you. If you loved the simple, direct sincerity of In America, skip this and go see The Chronicles of Riddick.