Your terminated sucker.....it would have been better in French.

Rating: 5/10 (9 June 2005)

Based on a true, and still continuing story of of Merhan Nasseri, and Iranian refugee living in an airport in France, this movie moves the location to New York.
Which is a pity, because because there story is too French to be true about America, especially in the current climate.
Tom Hanks plays another Forrest Gump type character. Victor is an innocent abroad, trapped in the International Waiting Lounge of New York airport because his country is having a civil war and his passport and visa are no longer valid (This is rather unlikely and the real story involves lost documents).
So there is the first mistake, we can't put ourselves in Victor shoes, so we can't share his fear and frustration. Can you imagine traveling in another country and losing your documents (I heard of someone being stuck in Russia for 3 months after losing all his money and passport).
Then the script is rather dull. There is a lot of potential, but why does airport security want to victimize him like that. France is a bureaucracy but America isn't. France will ignore someone, but America in the current climate is more likely to lock him up than let him roam around freely (law or now law, his is not a US citizen, rights don't really apply).
There could be a great battle of wits, a great love story a exploration of the farce of International law....instead it tries has none of these things and has very little.
It doesn't even make much of an effort to deal with the issues in America (Interestingly all the security people are either white or black with American accents, representing the false face of America, while the little people of the airport are all races and colours, all accents and represent the real America).
Not a bad film, but could be much more. I think the real problem is that Spielberg, with his minimal approach to story telling, fails to direct comedy well.
My final comment is that I was a stateless person for the first 10 years of my life. A movie like this should make everyone feel scared by letting them understand what this actually means. But in this it fails, so ultimately the movie is just 128 Minutes of very light entertainment.