The Terminal

Cast: Tom Hanks, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Stanley Tucci, Chi McBride, Diego Luna, Barry Shabaka Henley, Kumar Pallana and Zöe Saldana
Director: Steven Spielberg
Writer: Andrew Niccol, Sacha Gervasi
Genre: Comedy/Romance
Rated: PG low level coarse language, mature themes
Running Time: 129 Minutes

Life Is Waiting.

Synopsis:
'The Terminal' tells the story of Viktor Navorski (Tom Hanks), a visitor to New York City from Eastern Europe, whose homeland erupts in a fiery coup while he is in the air en route to America. Stranded at John F. Kennedy International Airport with a passport from nowhere, he is unauthorized to actually enter the United States and must improvise his days and nights in the terminal's international transit lounge until the war at home is over.

As the weeks and months stretch on, Viktor finds the compressed universe of the terminal to be a richly complex world of absurdity, generosity, ambition, amusement, status, serendipity and even romance with a beautiful flight attendant named Amelia Warren (Catherine Zeta-Jones). But Viktor has long worn out his welcome with airport official Frank Dixon (Stanley Tucci), who considers him a bureaucratic glitch, a problem he cannot control but desperately wants to erase.

My Verdict:
Tom Hanks continues to find totally new characters to play and play them well. As the traveller with no home, Viktor Navorski, he takes on an Eastern European accent as if English was his second language. He is the fish out of water here, in a place that he was meant to just pass through, but ends up finding friendship among the army of workers at JFK Airport. The characters that become Viktor's friends all have their own illegal residency status. The most outstanding friend is Gupta (85 year old Kumar Pallana!), an Indian cleaner, who is rude to all and enjoys watching travellers slip on the wet granite floor. Viktor finds a nemesis in the airport director, Frank Dixon, the guy you love to hate but know has a soft heart somewhere in there. Viktor also has a budding romance with flight attendant Amelia, who has a different agenda to Viktor, yet knows it should be otherwise.

Attention to detail was uppermost in director Steven Spielberg's mind when creating the set for 'The Terminal'. A complete airport terminal was built in a hangar and is an amalgamation of various terminals, and was a freestanding three-stories-high atrium style building within a building, which took 20 weeks to construct. Inside, it comes complete with stores that would be found in any airport terminal, which actually had working fixtures. These are used throughout the film and are highlighted when Viktor tries to find employment in order to gain some form of income.

'The Terminal' is a delightful movie that doesn't rely on computer-generated images, or special effects, but is simply a basic drama/comedy with a touch of romance thrown in. It was so nice to be able to sit back and watch a movie that didn't have any hand-held camera shots, had long takes so that the action wasn't all over the place and had such genuine, varied and lovable characters. The only downside is that perhaps it was a little overly long but otherwise it was a purely enjoyable experience.

Rating : B

Christina Bruce