"Life is like an airport; ya never know where ya gonna be"

Rating: Null/10 (30 June 2004)

THE TERMINAL (2004) ***1/2 Tom Hanks, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Stanley Tucci, Chi McBride, Diego Luna, Zoe Saldana, Kumar Pallana. Hanks delivers another patented wonderful acting turn as Viktor Navorski a foreigner in a unique situation: en route from his (fictitious) homeland Krakozia to New York he is found in a unique situation when his country is suddenly turned upside down in a civil war out break that leaves him stranded at John F. Kennedy International Airport where he cannot go back nor venture further until either the conflict stops or his nation is recognized by the good ol' USA. Stranger in a strange land trappings aside and with a convincing vaguely Slavic cum Greek accent Hanks' affable comic side gets a full work out mixing into social commentary via political underpinnings cum slapstick screwball romantic comedy (Zeta-Jones as a comely stewardess he encounters during his endless stay in limbo) and his arch nemesis in the prickly form of Tucci an airport bureaucrat from hell. Wes Anderson stock character actor Pallana steals the show as a grumpy janitor. The screenplay by Andrew Niccol, Sacha Gervasi and Jeff Nathanson has a Sturges like quality with some playful comedy and sentimentality smartly interplayed with the nimble stylings of Hanks as he tries to make do with silent screen homage to the likes of Chaplin and Keaton expertly staged by master filmmaker Steven Spielberg. Kudos to Alex McDowell's production design of building an actual replica of the famous airport as an entity unto itself. In spite of its cloying possibilities the film works in the sense of the universal belief that home is where the heart is.