A playful, warm-hearted film

Rating: 9/10 (7 December 2004)

In Steven Spielberg's The Terminal, Tom Hanks is Victor Navorski, a citizen of the fictional republic of Krakozhia who has come to New York on a personal mission only to learn that his country is in the middle of a revolution and that America is "closed" to him. Based on the story of an Iranian who remained at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris for twelve years, The Terminal is not a complex and demanding film, nor does it contain hard-edged social commentary but it has humanity, humor, and a great performance by Tom Hanks. He is "everyman", the little guy contending against the dehumanizing institutions of our modern world and Hanks' great screen presence makes him someone we can believe in and root for.
Viktor is a man without a country and must remain in the international transit lounge until things are resolved in Krakozhia and his nationality and visa status can be sorted out by rule-bound Frank Dixon (Stanley Tucci), JFK's Security Chief. While at the airport, he surrounds himself with an extended family of airport employees who, while wary at first, become eager to help. These include Gupta (Kumar Pallana), an Indian janitor who is paranoid about being deported, Enrique Cruz (Diego Luna), a food coordinator who is in love with agent Torres (Zoe Saldana), a burly baggage worker (Chi Mcbride), and a flight attendant named Amelia (Catherine Zeta-Jones) whom he falls in love with. It is to her alone that he reveals the mystery behind the strange can of Planters Peanuts he carries around with him. At first unable to cope with the language and his confusing surroundings, Viktor gradually gets things under control.
He creates a private bedroom in an unused part of the building that is under construction and earns money by collecting quarters from luggage rack. After taking it upon himself to plaster and paint a wall, he is hired by a construction crew to work at the airport earning $19 per hour, a sum which keeps him well supplied with Burger-King Whoppers. Navorski, destined to remain at the airport for an extended period of time, learns to slow down, develop patience, and become aware of what is happening around him. Yes, The Terminal has flaws. It is too long, too neatly packaged, and, given the state of homeland security paranoia, its credibility is stretched pretty far. Yet at the end I felt better about the world than I have for quite a while. Consider me a sentimentalist but The Terminal is the kind of playful warm-hearted film that I can enjoy over and over again without feeling guilty about its lack of significance.