Steven Spielberg channels Frank Capra and Tom Hanks creates another character you will always love.

Rating: Null/10 (2 July 2004)

I laughed. I cried. I felt my heart ache with pain and jump for joy. And I had a very real sense that in time, this 'serious comedy' from director Steven Spielberg and everyman actor Tom Hanks will be viewed as an American classic. No, it is not seamless. Yes, it is a stretch. Without question it is sweet and charming on a level that will put some people in a diabetic coma. But most folks will find it true and real and utterly wonderful.
Viktor Navorski (Hanks) is common man on a heart-felt personal mission. He has arrived in New York's Kennedy International Airport from his home in Eastern Europe full of purpose and excitement. But his timing couldn't be worse. While he has been in transit, war has broken out in his beloved Krakozhia; rebels have toppled the government. And even though he is thousands of miles away, Viktor is caught in the conflict. His passport is from a government that no longer exists; his visa is invalid; he cannot enter the United States, nor can he return home. Both he and ambitious international terminal security officer Frank Dixon (Stanley Tucci) are flummoxed by the snarled protocols and labyrinth bureaucracy that they now face, so Viktor takes up residence in the terminal itself while things are being worked out. Days turn into weeks and weeks into months as the good-hearted Krakozhian finds ways to make money, learn English, befriend the JFK staff and fall in love.
I certainly will not be the first or the last critic to call this a Capra-esque fable; it is exactly that, but in the most contemporary and sophisticated of terms. In some ways, the picture almost seems as if it is Spielberg's tribute to the legendary filmmaker. Frank Capra, an Italian immigrant, won three Academy Awards as the director of the American dream. Thematically, his best films demonstrated a basic faith in the essential goodness of the common man. And he told stories where honesty and justice triumphed over selfishness, deceit and institutional lack of caring. His classic films ('It's a Wonderful Life,' 'It Happened One Night,' 'Mr. Deeds Goes to Town,' 'You Can't Take it With You,' etc.) look dated now, in style and technique. These are different times. We aren't so naïve. We are, in fact, a lot more crass and cynical. But Frank Capra gave depression-era and post-World War II filmgoers a sense of hope and optimism; and he was proud when people could leave one of his films feeling good.
In 'The Terminal,' Steven Spielberg has given us a common man who faces a cross-section of every-day Americans and wins their hearts with a selfless act of diplomacy that disarms even his nemesis, the security chief. If you have some notion that this film is going to be sappy and irrelevant, be aware that there are scenes that crackle with Homeland Security paranoia; with the genuine pain of Flight Attendant Amelia Warren (Catherine Zeta-Zones), seven years into a self-destructive affair with an emotionally abusive married man; with people torn between self-interest and goodness.
This is a mature screenplay with rich, fully developed and utterly believable secondary characters, who, in a lesser work, would be nothing but caricatures. Chi McBride is Joe Mulroy, a baggage handler who runs poker nights where the prizes come from the lost luggage department; Diego Luna is Enrique Cruz, a food-service worker who bribes Viktor with meals to get him to play matchmaker with a beautiful INS agent (Zoë Saldana). And 85-year-old Kumar Pallana is Indian janitor Gupta Rajan, whose tragic past has left him a bitter old man. You care about all of them because they are so realand so funny.
One of the stars of this wonderful film is the three-story airline terminal set that was constructed in a Palmdale, California airplane hanger. Real airport security issues would have made impossible any notion of shooting the film in an actual airport, so the JFK mockup was created with the help of the kind of retailers that occupy every major terminal. No one paid product-placement fees to appear in the film, but instead built fully-functioning stores, including food-court restaurants that actually cranked out meals.
I have made friends with the people of JFK's International Terminal Lounge. I will be going back to visit again. I think there are truths there that I haven't even begun to imagine.