Tacky

Rating: 6/10 (23 July 2004)

*Spoilers*
Okay I had to write an essay on this film and here it is:
The Terminal: a film with a compelling title, a compelling story, and a compelling cast. In my preview journal, I have set high anticipations for the film and my movie-going experience. But is the movie truly worth the hype? The Terminal, although a decent feel-good comedy/drama, suffers because of script and acting errors, coupled with a loss of focus and a ludicrous finish.
The Terminal is a recent comedy/drama directed by Steven Spielberg. The film stars Tom Hanks as Viktor Navorski, and Catherine Zeta-Jones as Amelia.
To abridge the plot, Viktor Navorski arrives in New York from the fictitious republic of Krakozhia, only to be detained from entering the States because of a political coup inside of his country. Navorski cannot enter New York, and neither can he go back. He is forced to stay at the airport's international terminal. During his 9-month stay at the terminal, Viktor learns English,makes friends, falls in love, and makes trouble for Frank Dixon, the airport' s evil security and immigration officer (played by Stanley Lucci). The film is 2:09 in duration, has many sub-plots and frequently goes off on a tangent. In basis, the movie attempts to convey a foreigner's unfamiliarity and him accustoming with a new life.
The Terminal in spirit is a heart-warming feel-good drama. Despite frequent clichés and tacky romance, the film establishes this spirit for three fourths of its duration. However, the plot suffers from many obvious holes and mistakes. At the time Viktor Navorski arrives at the airport (which is a vast multi-million dollar set erected exclusively for this cinema) and is denied clearance, he is allowed to reside within the terminal complex. As message boards point out, by law he would have to be detained in a prison (which would not make for a very good story).
The movie theatre itself and my fellow viewers were a practical microcosm to help me build my opinions of The Terminal. The audience seemed to notice when something in the film was in disarray, and laughed at the humorous moments. Indeed, many parts in this film were comical, helping to provide a light aura to the plot. The acting of this picture is decent, though Hanks plays much too enthusiastically. He obtains the role of an Eastern European man and twists him into a juvenile buffoon. Hanks' voicing in particularly outlandish: he tries for a thick, Slavic accent, but ends up speaking in Bulgarian for the entirety of the film. One side-plot is particularly comical: a Russian traveler purchases medicine in America in order to cure his father back home, then is asked to withhold these medicines. The Russian threatens to commit suicide, and Navorski is brought in as a translator. The evil terminal czar Frank announces that '[The Russian] lives across from Krakozhia's border, and may converse in a different dialect.' As anticipated, the Russian man and Viktor comprehend each other beautifully. After an explanation that these pills are for a goat, the Russian man is set free to take a plane back home. As a show of Hollywood ignorance and simplicity, this could be deemed the worst episode in the film, and one may suppose it could have been a lot more elementary for Hanks to speak in Russian. If The Terminal tells an intriguing story leading up the climax, then the story's conclusion spells death for a potentially high-quality production. Many plot-loops are amiss in the film's conclusion. Viktor's love interest Amelia Warren regresses yet again to her boyfriend, murdering half the plot and tarnishing a happy ending. The Indian airport janitor Gupta (played by Kumar Pallana) makes an unexplained sacrifice for Navorski. Gupta delays Navorski's plane back to Krakozhia by running out onto the tarmac and stopping the arriving airplane with his mop. Gupta is then held at gunpoint by a SWAT team, and taken back to India, where he will wither away in jail for seven years, as a result of attacking a policeman years ago. The story, naturally, does not make any note of this. All too late in the movie, the audience learns Viktor's absurd motive for coming to America in the first place: to receive a signature from a jazz player (who has evidently played at the same hotel in New York for 9 months). The conclusion of The Terminal breaks apart desperately.
Overall, I had much higher standards and expectations about this movie, due to its cast and the director's reputation. I am not necessarily in favor of films that portray reality unerringly, however the plot holes were both significant and palpable in The Terminal. Meanwhile I enjoyed the film, better execution and a more realistic script would have cured the movie of its blemishes.