No duty free

Rating: 5/10 (21 December 2016)

The Terminal is a small scale film from Steven Spielberg. It is inspired by a true event but is really a fictionalised account.
Tom Hanks plays Viktor Navorski, a traveller from Krakozhia who arrives at New York's JFK Airport only to find that his passport is cancelled due to a civil war in his homeland. He is left stateless and living at the airport terminal lounge because he cannot leave the airport and enter New York or be sent back home.
Vicktor needs to find a way to survive at the terminal lounge, find a way to earn money for food for example, even learn English and pass the time day by day.
Frustrating him is Frank Dixon (Stanley Tucci) the security chief at the terminal who just wants him to leave so he can be someone else's problem. As time goes by Viktor learns English, gets a job, earns money, makes friends with the staff even finds romance with a stewardess (Catherine Zeta-Jones) and confounds Dixon which makes him more angrier.
Spielberg has made a Kafkaesque fantasy comedy and is helped by a likable performance by Hanks. They just about get away with this absurd premise helped by supporting characters such as Diego Luna, Kumar Pallana and Zoe Saldana (playing a Star Trek fan before she ended up with a major role in the Star Trek films.)
If this had happened in real life, Vicktor would had been sent an immigration lawyer and an interpreter and would had got temporary admission to the United States.
However Spielberg does lapse into schmaltz frequently in this film and Dixon is a weak token villain of the piece.