The Terminal (2004)

Like most people, I absolutely abhor airports and do everything in my power to get in and out as quickly as possible when I'm traveling. So I couldn't even begin to imagine what would happen if I found myself stuck in Viktor Navorski's situation. Navorski fell through a crack in the system and ended up having to live at JFK airport for about nine months.
That's the subject matter of The Terminal, a Steven Spielberg film starring Tom Hanks as Navorski. The movie begins with Navorski arriving in New York on a flight from his home country of Krakozhia. Like every other person on that plane, Viktor must navigate the passport counter before he can gain entry to New York City. Unbeknownst to Viktor, however, there was an uprising in his country when he was on the plane. The civil war and unrest in Krakozhia basically renders that country a non-entity for the time being and makes Viktor's passport and visa completely worthless as far as traveling purposes go. As the head customs officer Frank Dixon (played by Stanley Tucci) informs him, he can neither enter the United States nor go back to Krakozhia. Instead, Viktor must wait in limbo in the International Terminal at JFK until the situation in his homeland gets resolved.

That's the main plot of the movie in a nutshell. The rest of the film deals with this main story of Viktor's wait, and also shows several subplots that develop while Viktor is waiting. There is his adversarial relationship with Dixon, who, although is an unsympathetic character, does things by the book and doesn't force Viktor's hand one way or the other until very late in the film. There are the friendships Viktor develops with the airport workers that he sees every single day during his confinement (he even serves as a go-between for an unlikely romance). And there is the sweet relationship he forms with a flight attendant named Amelia Warren (Catherine Zeta-Jones) who has horrible taste in men.

I thought the first half of The Terminal was excruciatingly boring. First of all, I didn't like the way Tom Hanks played Navorski. He went for the stereotypical portrayal of a foreigners as "bumbling idiots" what with the way he runs into glass doors, goes into the women's restroom (even though it's clearly marked), and just generally seems not to have a clue about how things work. As someone with a lot of experience traveling abroad and living in foreign countries, I can tell you that you don't suddenly turn incompetent when you enter a new country -- even if you don't understand the language or customs at all.

To make matters worse, Hanks' characterization wasn't even consistent. For example, Viktor doesn't speak much English at all when he first arrives in the U.S. His first meeting with Dixon and his pathetic attempts at finding a job clearly show this. Yet just a few months later, he's able to carry on in-depth conversations in English and understand complex subject matters? Well, which is it? If Viktor was truly the bumbling idiot Hanks makes him at the beginning of the film, he wouldn't have been able to pick up the language that quickly. If he was smart enough to pick up the language, then his actions at the beginning of the film are just absurd.

Besides the characterization, I had to wonder why anyone would want to make a film about someone who is essentially waiting. Obviously, there's a bigger message here, but that didn't exactly help move the plot along. Don't get me wrong: I don't need to have two hours of non-stop bang-'em-up action scenes in a movie in order to enjoy it, but this film was a real snooze!

I stuck with it however, and have to say that the second half was much, much better. I didn't care enough about the characters to care about how their lives turned out, but at least things happened in the second half of the movie.

If you're looking for something entertaining to watch, you won't find it in The Terminal. As a big fan of both Hanks and Spielberg, I gave this movie every chance to work for me, but it just didn't. I recommend staying away!