Entertaining throughout, but doesn't add up to much

Rating: 7/10 (26 July 2004)

Having been around a few airport terminals in my time, I can safely say that it's a place that I only visit out of necessity, and sure is hell would never think of living in one. I've been lucky enough not to have been stuck interminably in between flights or delayed more than a few hours, and will be eternally grateful to the powers that be for that. I can't imagine having to spend a whole day in an airport, and the thought of having to take up residence in one for several days is almost as abhorrent to me as the thought of having to clean out a construction site porta-pot.

In The Terminal, our mythical hero Viktor Navorski (Tom Hanks) from the mythical land of Krakozia lands in the not so mythical J.F.K. airport. While Viktor was in the air, getting from there to here, Krakozia undergoes a coup. Because of this, Viktor technically has no country to return to, and since the U.S. doesn't recognize the new mythical regime, his passport and visa are no longer valid and are confiscated by mythical security chief Frank Dixon (Stanley Tucci) who then tells Viktor he can't leave the airport and enter New York City and must not leave the International Arrivals Lounge. Of course Frank expects Viktor to do what just about anyone else would and leave anyway, but Viktor does as he is told and stays at the airport, and stays and stays and stays and stays and stays etc. It doesn't help matters that Viktor doesn't understand but a few words of English, that his money is no longer any good, and that it takes him about five minutes to lose all of his food vouchers. I think it's called having your back up against the wall.
Viktor finally makes a few friends at the airport including a janitor, a food service worker, an INS agent who stamps his permission to leave with a big red declined every day, and develops a crush on the beautiful Amelia (Catherine Zeta-Jones), an airline hostess having an affair with a married guy (Michael Nouri). How Viktor copes and learns to live is kind of sweet, often funny, and sometimes sad. The fact that we buy any of this at all can be laid squarely on the shoulders of Tom Hanks who gives a remarkable performance as Viktor. Not only does his accent stay consisted, his broken English never falters one bit as he learns phrases by comparing his Krakozia tour book to the exact same one written in English. He keeps Viktor consistent throughout, a simple man whose one desire is to be able to enter New York to fulfill a promise kept in a peanut can he carries from place to place. Viktor is the kind of person Frank Dixon doesn't understand, can't understand, and yet in some small way perhaps envies him because he is able to relate to people in ways that Frank will never be able to.
Of course much of what happens in The Terminal is far-fetched (although supposedly loosely based on a true story) but since this is fairy-tale land I guess it's supposed to be. Viktor acts as a go between in helping develop a relationship between the INS agent Officer Torres (Zoe Saldana) and the food service worker Enrique (Diego Luna), both of whom end up being devout trekkies. Relationships have been built on less though as witnessed by Amelia who has been hanging out with the married guy for several years waiting for him to leave his wife. As Viktor develops his own relationship with her, it is both touching and sweet, and we root for them. Viktor eventually does find a job at the airport in a sequence that seems written more out of convenience for the plot than any other reason.
Credit also has to be given to the writers and Spielberg for being able to pace a two hour film that takes place in an airport terminal in just the right way so that it is interesting and seldom bogs down. I never felt like it was two hours which is saying quite a bit when you think of what two hours at the airport really feels like.
There are some truly warm and fuzzy moments in The Terminal, some pretty good laughs, a few good enough if not spectacular performances by the cast (other than Hanks who is excellent), and several entertaining characters. Yet when it is over, you'll still leave the theater asking, `So what?' A lot of the reason for this is that we get an ending you'll find only partially satisfying. Some may quibble that if Spielberg had given us everything we wanted, than it wouldn't have been true to the story or the characters. In answer to that I can only say hey, if you're going to give us two hours of what is basically a modern day fairy tale, you can at least give your audience what you know they want to see. If a totally satisfying ending is good enough for Mother Goose, it should be fine for Spielberg's fairy tale as well. I still may have left saying, `So what?' but I would have felt better about asking the question. All in all, it's an entertaining enough way to spend two hours, but it's just one of those films that in the end isn't memorable enough to make it worth a trip to a theater, yet is good enough that you would probably want to watch it on DVD in the comfort of your living room at some point in time. And if the only thing I can recommend is that people see your film on DVD, I have no choice but to give you my grade and for The Terminal that's a B-.