Wonderful character study and exercise in fantasy, undermined by a boneheaded plot device.

Rating: 6/10 (23 October 2005)

**Minor Spoiler Below***
I swear, if Spielberg wasn't Spielberg, and if people didn't walk in already set to praise this movie to the skies because it WAS by Stephen "E.T./Jaws" Spielberg, people would roundly hate this movie and it would mark the end of his career as an important director.
I have a hard time expressing just how much this movie irritated me on a story and plotting level. I kept telling myself, "Relax, for God's sake. It's a FANTASY and a PARABLE about patience, waiting, and home, and also (again) about America and about one little man's attempt to persevere against the odds in the face of an uncaring bureaucracy."
I also kept telling myself,"Look, a lot of this movie is just an excuse to play out the half-baked notions any long distance traveler gets...what would it be like to actually stay in a huge place that is intended as nothing more than a waiting zone, that attempts to provide the comforts of home while at the same time being more sterile and impersonal than any home could ever be? How would you cope? How would you pass the time? What minor comforts and pleasures would you manage to finagle from a place of tiles, fast food, newsstands, vending machines, indoor/outdoor carpeting, vinyl seats and indifferent strangers? What would it be like to live like a mouse in the walls here? What hidden sanctuaries and hideyholes would you find as you explored?"
And I kept reminding myself, "Look, Tom Hanks is great in this. He's as appealing as usual in an ego-less noble "Everyman" role. There's not a false note in his entire performance (although it's an easy role to play.) And Jones is fine, and hits just the right notes. And the supporting character actors are, well, whimsical and charming and wistful etc., just like they always are in a Spielberg fantasy setting. Hell, even Stanley Tucci, who I LOVE as a character actor is great, even if he plays an officious creep."
Nothing worked. I don't care if its a fantasy - there is NO WAY that even an officious bureaucrat would leave someone to starve (in a very public way) in the middle of a major metropolitan airport. Even if he was the most officious, rigid prick in the Western Hemisphere, one call to the N.Y.Times, the Wall Street Journal, "60 Minutes", etc from one of the many "little people" that Hanks made friends with would bring such a sh*tstorm of public indignation down on Tucci that his career would be toast in 1 hour. And Tucci would know this. So he could put in 5 minutes of work and solve the problem "under the table". One call to the State Department asking to grant him asylum at the Embassy of a neutral nation...one temporary visa to a nearby airport hotel under house arrest,with an Air Marshall to keep an eye on him...one appeal to the Red Cross or the ACLU...ANYONE...could have resolved the problem and kept Hanks' character safe and comfortable (and out of the public eye) until they knew what to do with him.
So the fact that not one of the 'little' folks that supposedly came to know and love Hanks ever made that one phone call to help him...that Tucci, whose very job depended on keeping things clean, safe, and orderly in his airport, couldn't make a judgment call based on decades of experience to assist an obviously harmless and inoffensive man...that kept grinding into my thinking like a stone in my shoe, and kept me from enjoying all the cutesy charming sentimentality that Spielberg was slathering on by the barge-load.
Otherwise, it had some nice moments. I especially liked the dining scene between Hanks and Jones on the balcony pavilion overlooking the concourse. And I appreciated that Zeta-Jones eventually chose to resume her life with her former beau, which rang true to the choice a women in her position would almost certainly make for her own emtional survival.
Otherwise, though...Spielberg,you SUCK.