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The Terminal - 6/18/04 - PG-13 - 128m
Tom Hanks - Viktor Navorski
Catharine Zeta-Jones - Amelia Warren
Stanley Tucci - Frank Dixon
Director: Steven Spielberg
Written by: Andrew Niccol & Sacha Gervasi
Studio: Dreamworks
Official
Website
LYN
Nutshell: Viktor Navorski (Tom Hanks) is a man with out a country. While flying to America, his home country had a little coup d'état, and in essence leaving it without a government. Thus traveling in or out of the country been was suspended, and travel visas and or passports, cancelled. Viktor therefore could not go home, nor could he enter the United States without a valid passport. Hence leaving him a guest of the transit authority of New York until such time that his status could be determined. So put simply, he could not leave the confines of the airport.
Now keeping in mind that I had once found myself a captive within the walls of the Raleigh-Durham airport for four hours while waiting for a connecting flight that was delayed in Dallas-Ft. Worth because of bad weather, and thus was keeping me from getting back to Philly. That in of itself was enough of an experience to want to eat a bullet, cause there ain’t much to do in an airport normally, let alone for 4 hours. Anyway, I was curious to see how Viktor was going to handle his extended stay.
It was a charming film with an extremely enjoyable cast of characters. The story was intriguing, but somewhere near the end of the film, things really started to lose steam. Yeah, it was funny to see how Viktor handle everyday life, but after awhile you’re kind of wishing that he would just leave already. “Okay…Ha ha ha…Now just go…please?” It just wasn’t funny anymore, and the ending left me feeling somewhat empty. Like that “Yeah, so?” feeling.
I must say this about the film though. The set was astonishing. They actually built a full size airport terminal interior, with fully stocked stores, a food court, and two real escalators. It was truly astounding. To pay such attention to detail in effort for realism…it’s to be commended. Only if that much attention had been spent on the story, then this movie would have really soared (no airport pun intended) unfortunately, it did not. 
Lyn
