Release Date: June 18, 2004
Starring: Tom Hanks, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Stanley Tucci, Chi McBride, Diego Luna, Kumar Pallana, Zoe Saldana
Directed by: Steven Spielberg
Written by: Sacha Gervasi, Jeff Nathanson
Distributed by: DreamWorks
MPAA Rating: PG-13 (brief language, drug references)
With respect to the rest of his work, The Terminal is almost too simple a movie for Steven Spielberg. Much like Spielberg’s lighthearted and breezy Catch Me If You Can, this is a straightforward and uncomplicated dramatic comedy that carries the themes of love and friendship and the sense of fantasy that the filmmaker has embraced throughout his career. Here he’s merely telling us a clever story that, despite being far-fetched, is a pleasant reminder of humanity’s good side. And there’s absolutely no better actor than the incomparable Tom Hanks to help the director lead us through it.
Hanks plays Viktor Navorski, a citizen of the recently otherthrown (and fictional) nation of Krakozhia. Knowing little English beyond the words “yes” and “keep the change,” he bumbles his way through New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport, trying to understand why an airport official (played by Stanley Tucci) has told him not to leave the arrivals terminal. Then he sees TV news reports of his home country’s fall, and he scurries through the terminal frightened and confused, begging in his native language for someone to explain what’s happening. He’s stranded with no country to call his own, and now that his passport is invalid he is unable to leave the airport and walk on American soil.
Spielberg’s camera follows Viktor briskly and effortlessly through the terminal as he struggles to grasp what’s happening. And finally the sequence ends with a slow backwards pan that reveals the crowded airport, packed with people unsympathetic to his problem, and Viktor stands alone and helpless, slowly becoming smaller and smaller in the frame. He’s trapped with nowhere to go and no one to help him, just like Hanks’s character was in Cast Away. This time, however, his character has an undying optimism that eventually leads him into close friendships, a steady job, and even romance, all within the confines of the airport terminal.
Not surprisingly, Hanks pulls off both a hilarious comedic performance and strong dramatic one. In the vein of his unforgettable role in Forrest Gump, he plays a man who is laughably confused, has an admirable sense of self-worth, and sometimes falls into an unusual amount of good luck. And most important of all, he looks out for others before himself. One minute he’ll be forcing himself to eat a ketchup cracker sandwich (because he can’t afford to buy real food), and the next he’ll be rushing to help someone who can’t get their suitcase closed or has fallen on a wet floor.
He sleeps in a closed section of the terminal, on a bed made of conjoined waiting chairs. He bathes at the sink in the public restroom. He earns money by collecting 25-cent rewards for returning luggage carriers. He teaches himself English by comparing tour guide books. And he eventually agrees to help a young man (Diego Luna) woo an attractive immigration officer (Zoe Saldana) in exchange for free meals. Soon Viktor is close friends with the young man, as well as a baggage handler (Chi McBride) who plays poker for unclaimed luggage, and a janitor (Kumar Pallana) who gets kicks out of watching people fall on the freshly mopped floor he has clearly labeled unsafe. Each of them help provide plenty of amusing anecdotes throughout the story, and only one man is trying to stop all of the fun -- Stanley Tucci’s authority figure.
The plot of The Terminal (which is loosely based on a real-life incident) is not entirely believable, but the movie’s strength comes from the characters and the relationships they build, not the plausibility of the overall story. It’s the roles played by Hanks and company that bring to life the themes that undoubtedly attracted a man like Spielberg to the project -- those of hope, compassion, and loyalty.
The only part of the film that is disagreeable is the character played by Tucci; granted, he is the film’s antagonist, but he doesn’t have an effective role to play. He’s a selfish man with no tact, someone who eats his lunch while breaking the news to Viktor that he’ll be stuck in the terminal until further notice. Once it takes much longer than expected to sort out Viktor’s problem, Tucci’s character wants the stranded man to illegally leave his airport and become “someone else’s problem.” But when the story progresses to the point where everyone but Tucci is in love with Viktor, his stubbornness is uncomfortably forced. His actions toward the end lack conviction, and he becomes one of a handful of story elements that simply occur for the sake of a pedestrian story arc.
Viktor’s romantic interest in a flight attendant (Catherine Zeta-Jones) is another of those elements, but her presence is limited enough so as not to harm the story. She makes an impression, though she doesn’t turn the movie into a generic Hollywood romance. Ultimately, she lets Hanks and his friends, the ones who really matter most to the film, have all of the attention.
Like Viktor Navorski himself, the film remains determined no matter what. It wants to leave its audience with the same upbeat sense of optimism that many of the characters discover themselves, and it succeeds. With The Terminal, Spielberg (along with his usual elite co-workers, like cinematographer Janusz Kaminski and composer John Williams) has once again crafted a heartwarming film that should easily touch a wide audience. Even if the director could have done it with a hand tied behind his back, it was well worth his time to make -- just as it is ours to watch.
-- Andy Zientek (zfilm@earthlink.net)