A Terminal-ly ill script grounds the best efforts of Spielberg and Hanks.

Rating: 5/10 (16 March 2005)

Steven Spielberg. Tom Hanks. Catherine Zeta-Jones. This movie can't miss. Right? Right?! Um...wrong.
"The Terminal" has a promising premise. Based on a true story, Tom Hanks is Viktor Navorski, an Eastern European immigrant stuck in the terrestrial version of Dante's limbo, a New York City airport, after a civil war breaks out in his home country. All he wants to do is fulfill a nebulous mission, but standing in his way is the airport's expedient head of security (Stanley Tucci), all of which sets up a standard fish-out-of-water story that has its moments but ultimately falls short.
Mildly reminiscent of "Cast Away", Hanks occasionally shines as a character out of his element, as his attention to small things and everyman qualities allow the viewer to play along as he scrapes by in an airport. (Besides, who hasn't been stuck in an airport for what seems like forever?) However his selective understanding of English raises eyebrows with its convenience, which is perhaps the overriding problem with "Terminal". Similarly, everything is simply too conducive to the direction of the story, without providing a foundation for such progression. Need two people to fall in love? Oh look, they happen to share a quirky passion. Need to jump ahead days or weeks? Thirty seconds of filler should suffice. Plus the partial truths and misunderstandings create the feeling of a teen comedy with a grown-up cast. ultra-realism isn't necessary, but too many decisions and communications (or lack thereof) are simply too implausible to take seriously.
In less capable hands, "Terminal" would have been unbearably buttery due to such faults; but the solid lead work of Hanks and Catherine Zeta-Jones, accompanied by good-as-usual supporting actors like Tucci, creates at least marginally interesting characters. Overall though, the characters hit one note and little more. Those notes are usually played well, but soon grow monotonous. Director Steven Spielberg's uncanny, sometimes grating, ability to generate emotional power also contributes to the enjoyability, which doesn't reach full speed until the final act, despite the attempts of John Williams's pleasantly upbeat score to zip the movie forward.
This is because the motivation of Hanks's character is absent for first 90 minutes of the film. The idea is presumably to lure the audience along while wondering why, but the question is staged as a side attraction rather than the main event. Once revealed, that story arc finishes strong, but the film is then so far behind that it can't catch up, like a late but futile kick down the stretch of a track race.
Like its main character who is limited by his surroundings, "The Terminal" perseveres with what meager sustenance it has, but in the end not even the prominent talent of the participants can launch the movie past its mediocre story. The script surely looked much better on paper than on screen, and the movie reflects that, promising so much yet delivering so little.
Bottom Line: A major disappointment. 5 of 10, and that's generous.