The Terminal movie cast trailer

I often question overwhelmingly positive opinions about admired filmmakers and actors, particularly a one-two punch team like Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks. Digressing for a moment here, I am a big Martin Scorsese fan. I think he is the greatest American director alive, for the time being. Therefore, I wish I could say that "Gangs of New York," his last major film, was a disappointment, as many found it to be, but I thought it was one of the most powerful epics ever made. And that leads me to Steven Spielberg, a formidable director with a curious desire lately not to overinflate or pontificate manipulative emotions. And, leaving aside the execrable "1941" and "Hook," Spielberg has not made a single bad film. Every work speaks for itself, from "Saving Private Ryan" to "Catch Me if You Can." Those last two pictures also starred Tom Hanks. These guys never seem to disappoint me but I suppose I was waiting for one of them to fail, just once. Failure is not a bad thing - it just builds character. Still, "The Terminal" is one of the breeziest, most charming comedies in quite some time, and a truly unique marvel thanks to Spielberg and Hanks

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The Terminal movie images

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The Terminal movie cast and crew

Directed by
Steven Spielberg

Tom Hanks

Catherine Zeta-Jones

Stanley Tucci

Chi McBride

Diego Luna

Barry Shabaka Henley

Kumar Pallana

Zoe Saldana

Eddie Jones

Jude Ciccolella

Corey Reynolds

Guillermo Díaz

Honorine Bell

The Terminal movie overiew

I often question overwhelmingly positive opinions about admired filmmakers and actors, particularly a one-two punch team like Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks. Digressing for a moment here, I am a big Martin Scorsese fan. I think he is the greatest American director alive, for the time being. Therefore, I wish I could say that "Gangs of New York," his last major film, was a disappointment, as many found it to be, but I thought it was one of the most powerful epics ever made. And that leads me to Steven Spielberg, a formidable director with a curious desire lately not to overinflate or pontificate manipulative emotions. And, leaving aside the execrable "1941" and "Hook," Spielberg has not made a single bad film. Every work speaks for itself, from "Saving Private Ryan" to "Catch Me if You Can." Those last two pictures also starred Tom Hanks. These guys never seem to disappoint me but I suppose I was waiting for one of them to fail, just once. Failure is not a bad thing - it just builds character. Still, "The Terminal" is one of the breeziest, most charming comedies in quite some time, and a truly unique marvel thanks to Spielberg and Hanks.

The setting is the JFK International Airport. The man without a country is Viktor Navorski (Tom Hanks), just arriving in America from the fictional Krakozia, a Balkan country. Unfortunately, as he arrives at customs, he is denied entrance into America. Basically, he cannot leave the airport! According to Frank Dixon (Stanley Tucci), a customs official, a military coup has bound Krakozia in a vice - nobody can go or leave from that country. This means that Narvoski can only hang about the lounge and wait for the coup to be lifted - he is persona non grata. Dixon hopes Narvoski will leave so that INS can take care of him. The Balkan man, however, speaking only a little English and confused of his situation, returns luggage carts to get quarter refunds, applies for a job with every store, sleeps in a decrepit hangar, flirts with a flight attendant, Amelia (Catherine Zeta-Jones), makes friends with a janitor, Gupta (Kumar Pallana), who suspects the Balkan is a spy, and a lovestruck food services carrier (Diego Luna) who hopes Narvoksi can help him win the affections of a lovely INS official (Zoe Saldana).

Part of the charm of "The Terminal" is its square focus on Narvoski, a man with nothing to lose and one never angry at the prospect of staying at a terminal for 9 months (based on a true story of an Iranian who's been stuck at the Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris since 1988). Navorksi tries to make his stay more comfortable, even having fun at meeting with the INS official every day despite being rejected for a visa with those pesky green forms. And he even gets a construction job at 11 dollars an hour!

A relationship also develops with Amelia that could make or break Narvoski. He discovers Amelia is having an affair with a married man, though she has an uncontrollable habit of making dates with men. She is a 20-year employee living out of hotels and a suitcase - in a way, she is as stuck in her predicament as Narvoski is. That makes them compatible, to some degree, and they have a mutual understanding of Napoleon Bonaparte and Italian food.

What makes "The Terminal" fly is its grounded simplicity. This movie never intends to makes its laughs obvious, showing Spielberg's penchant for less is infinitely more (a truism that needs more practice). The staging of moments like the initial encounter between Narvoski and the tempermental Dixon is assured in its lack of kinetic energy - simple and static with subtle camera moves enhance the mood. This movie doesn't want to bang you over the head with heavy pratfalls or slapstick, though there are a few terrific moments where passengers slip on wet floors while Gupta sits and smiles. Spielberg and Hanks's laid-back persona allows for small comic miracles, all through insinuation and practicality (and this is a nod to the work of Jacques Tati, one who believed in simplicity to evoke laughs). We have seen the cliche of a man who can't comfortable sleep on his bed - I remember the hysterical motions of Jack Nicholson maneuvering himself in a waterbed in "About Schmidt." Hanks does one better as he brings a host of lounge chairs, dismantles certain parts, and makes a nice, cozy bed out of it.

There are a few nifty surprises in "The Terminal," though it is not fair to reveal them. Taking cues from Tati's "Mr. Hulot's Holiday" and Charlie Chaplin, "The Terminal" builds its laughs, sentiment and simplicity through its leading lovable character and its setting. This whole film practically takes place in and around an airport. Spielberg and his crackerjack team make the place not inhospitable but rather inviting in a way. The beauty of it is that Spielberg and Hanks contrive so many gags and so many laughs along the way that you'll forget you're watching the simple tale of a man whose new domicile is an airport.

The Terminal movie review

Steven Spielberg seems to go through phases of obsession. When he made Schindler’s List he immersed himself in the holocaust, when he did Saving Private Ryan he became obsessed with World War II, and after A.I. he focused on future fiction and released Minority Report. After Catch Me if You Can, his latest passing interest is apparently airports and Tom Hanks’ Viktor Navorski pays the price as Spielberg strands him indefinitely in a fictional terminal.

Navorski you see is from a tiny Eastern European country torn apart by a fierce coup. He arrives in New York, passport in hand and armed with a couple of poorly understood English phrases, only to discover his country no longer exists. His visa is denied. He cannot enter New York nor is there any way he can be returned home. He’s fallen through what studiously strict airport supervisor Frank Dixon (Stanley Tucci) describes as a crack in the system and as such is unacceptable. He’s released to the confines of the airport for what Dixon predicts may only be a few days, but soon turns into months. Viktor cannot leave or he risks federal prison, he cannot go home since there’s no one to take him, and so he waits in the ultimate traveler’s nightmare.

The specifics of all this are a little confusing and we never really seem to understand why Viktor won’t simply sneak out of the airport when no one is looking. While the premise may be a little shaky, it’s Hanks’ utterly convincing performance that sells it. He plays Viktor as amiable and serious, even when struggling to speak English through a thick, Russian-like accent. The accent by the way is pretty convincing, in part because Viktor isn’t prone to speaking often or quickly. Hanks struggles through wonderfully halting speech as the obviously intelligent foreigner stumbles in attempting to cope with his bizarre and unenviable situation, which would paint him unfairly as a buffoon. Sure, there are plenty of jokes about his inability to understand English and maybe that could be considered cheap. But Spielberg’s take is kind and Hank’s performance so gentle and subtle that the jokes come off as genuine and Viktor’s potentially cliché confusion is both entertaining and touching. It’s just impossibly easy to warm up to Viktor, as it almost always is to any Hanks character. He’s someone you can instantly care about and root for, whether looking for precious food-buying quarters or constructing sleeping arrangements in some back corner of a lonely airport.


Spielberg shoots Viktor lovingly, a forgotten traveler going nowhere while everyone else is going somewhere. Spielberg bathes him in flickering neon lights, sometimes flashing glaring airport brights right into the camera so that the light flows and crashes around him in key emotional moments. The airport itself even takes on life of its own through the antiquated arrivals and departures board Spielberg uses as sort of a title card between scenes. I can’t help but enjoy the supporting characters he surrounds him with too, airport employees who are at first suspicious but eventually embrace him. A motley crew of immigrants and slackers driving food trucks and mopping floors, they’re the blue collar people of the “real” world. They give America a positive face to Viktor in contrast to the evil, unfeeling one portrayed by the hidebound immigration administration who holds him prisoner.

Then there’s Catherine Zeta-Jones, who slips quite literally into the picture a little ways in, when Viktor is hopelessly mired in his bad situation. Theirs is an abortive attempt at a love story, which while I admire it for the brave way in which Spielberg ends things, and maybe even could have enjoyed it as a way to bring out the best in Hanks’ character, fails utterly on the spiked heels of Zeta-Jones. The woman can’t act. She’s useless unless playing a heartless bitch. High Fidelity, Intolerable Cruelty, even Chicago, these are roles where she works because she’s playing a horrid, painfully shallow person. She’s incapable of anything else and proves it here when asked to play an aging and hopelessly confused stewardess. It’s impossible not to hate her, and not just because she can’t commit.

If you’ve ever flown, you’ve experienced the fake friendliness of a stewardess in flight. Now imagine if that same stewardess took that fake smile, condescending tone, and plastic demeanor and applied it to every aspect of her personal life. Imagine someone who comes off so faux that even in the movie’s most heartfelt moments she comes off cold, distant, and forced. It seems impossible that she could be a real person. Oh sure, tears are shed, but you get the sense that it’s all just some sick act. How could Viktor like someone like this? How could he even talk to her? How can you root for Viktor to woo her when you’re busy hoping she falls down an escalator?

Thank god their relationship isn’t the only focus of the film, or The Terminal would be a total disaster. Blissfully, Catherine’s screen time is limited, their relationship only one of many threads winding the otherwise sweet and enjoyable Terminal together. This is an otherwise pretty simple movie that relies on Hanks to kick in another admirable performance and gives Steven freedom to create. Both deliver and the movie for the most part scores, in spite of muddied premise and a singularly bad casting choice.