An airport story

Rating: Null/10 (3 September 2004)

Steven Spielberg tells the tale of an Eastern European man who gets stuck at JFK due to a series of unfortunate circumstances. The premise of the film is a good one, the injection of 'comedy' into the proceedings, however, isn't. Not much in the way of laughs here unfortunately, I only recall "we don't play for money, we play for unclaimed items from the lost and found" making any sort of impression on me - oh, and not forgetting the discovery of why flight attendants are always smiling.
Tom Hanks is the man with the unenviable task of pulling off a Krakozian accent  and in the end seemingly turns to Sacha Baron Cohen's Borat for help, "As we say in Kazhakstan..."  but his isolated character does bring back good memories of his 'Castaway' turn.
SPOILERS
A few interesting points to notice: how Victor arrives in the US with only "Yes" and "No" to his English vocabulary, yet only days later is near fluent after purchasing a handbook from an airport shop and watching a news report. Plus, it was too long  the subplot with the Indian man is unnecessary and him stepping in front of a Boeing at the end is ridiculous in the extreme. Also, Catherine Zeta-Jones is totally wasted  either that, or the romance was just thrown in as a Spielberg 'crowd pleaser' and then abandoned mid-point because of the complete lack of credibility.
And the token sappy Spielberg ending doesn't disappoint either. Apart from the Indian on the runway, we also get half of the airport following Hanks down an escalator (why? - not everybody in the airport is gonna know, or care, about the guy), and then to top it off we get a member of airport security going against orders and actually giving Hanks his jacket. Then we get snow. Terrible ending.