The Terminal review

This is the third film Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks have collaborated on following Saving Private Ryan and Catch Me If You Can. It's also the most unabashedly sentimental and frivolous. After his occasional foray into darker realms, Spielberg has returned his focus to the wholesome family fare on which he established his reputation. But his attempt to recapture the sense of innocence and wonder he once mastered has eluded him. Instead The Terminal is a crudely contrived and manipulative work that is saved from complete dismissal by another wonderfully creative and engaging performance by Hanks.

Spielberg has always celebrated the magic of the movies, rarely troubling himself with representing reality. Instead he is more interested in creating a fantasy world, even if it happens to be set in something as prosaic as an airport, as it is here. Although nearly the whole film is confined to New York's JFK international terminal, there is little concession to verisimilitude other than cynical product placement. Almost every character is a crudely rendered cliché or cartoonish fake, created to facilitate the outlandish premise. The fact that the story was inspired by a true incident makes Sacha Gervasi and Jeff Nathanson's unbelievable script that much harder to reconcile.

Hanks plays Viktor Navorski, who arrives in New York to discover that while in the air a coup in his country of Krakozhia (a fake Eastern European nation) has rendered his visa invalid and him temporarily without status. Or "unacceptable" as the airport's head of security Frank Dixon (Stanley Tucci) puts it. Unable to return to his war torn home or set foot on US soil, Viktor is stuck in Kafkaesque bureaucratic limbo. Given a pager and some food vouchers, he is told to remain in the terminal until further notice.

With no money and only the crudest grasp of English, the bumbling easy going Viktor is left to fend for himself. He befriends some of the airport's staff, including a gruff cleaner Gupta (Kumar Pallana) and a love struck caterer (Diego Luna). As Viktor makes his home at Gate 67 and strikes up a friendship with a stewardess (Catherine Zeta-Jones), his prolonged presence becomes a problem for Dixon who wants nothing to disrupt his impending promotion.

Hanks imbues Viktor with a resonant charm, translating his language and cultural discoveries with a vivid palette of emotions and expressions. But over the course of two hours, the film's ploy of deriving much of its humour from simple misunderstandings and mispronunciations wares thin. As do the dubious plot contrivances introduced to solicit the maximum sympathy for Viktor.

As you'd expect from Spielberg, things are slick, smooth and light. There's little concern with delving below the surface. When you consider the story involves a man who has lost his country and his life, such neglects are not insignificant. And while the situation allows plenty of room for humour, it's just a shame that it is of the fatuous variety.