Review: The Terminal
June 18, 2004; Regal Falmouth #2
* * 1/4 (out of 4)

It’s one thing for a movie to start as something, and over the course of the running time smoothly transition into being something else; this is clever, entertaining, and hard to do. It’s entirely another thing for a movie to simply not know what it wants to be, so it tries to be everything. This is even harder to do, and if it isn’t done perfectly, the end product doesn’t come out too well. This is where The Terminal falls. Steven Spielberg has a nice little character in Viktor Navorski, but he doesn’t decide what side of the character to explore. He just explores everything all at once, overloading the viewer and, at times, downright boring them.

Navorski (Tom Hanks) is going through a customs check in JFK Airport when a military coup overthrows the government of his homeland, rendering his passport and all other legal documents invalid. Thus, Navorski falls through a crack: he can’t step foot onto U.S. soil because he can’t pass the airport’s incoming customs check, nor can he go home, because he cannot pass the airport’s outgoing customs check. He is forced to live in the airport for nearly a year while his government restabilizes, making friends and falling in love with a flight attendant (Catherine Zeta-Jones) along the way. Meanwhile, his continuous presence is a constant thorn in the side of security chief Frank Dixon (Stanley Tucci).

There should be a great movie here. There’s a great cast, Spielberg’s directing is as top-notch as is expected… it just feels like in writing the script, Sacha Gervasi and Jeff Nathanson wanted to go every which way, and make Navorski run the gamut of human interaction – friendship, hostility, love, fear, sadness – and never focus on a single one. By cramming all of this into two hours and twenty minutes, they ended up just making the movie feel longer and more fragmented. It seems like Navorski only deals with one of these issues at any given time, so there are 8 stories within his life continually running alongside each other, with only the airport setting to tie them together.

Hanks is pretty good with Navorski, and there’s obvious growth in the character, but the growth happens to quickly between scenes to be realistic. Also, even though there’s not enough focus on the romance to make it matter, the 15-year age difference between Hanks and Zeta-Jones is definitely noticeable and a bit unnerving. Tucci is the most solid of anyone in the cast. Normally straightforward and by the book, Frank Dixon’s reactions to Navorski are second in humor only to Dixon’s repeated unorthodox attempts to rid himself of his unwelcome guest. Tucci keeps an energy in Dixon that makes him fun to watch, and also makes his ambition and resolution that much more believable.

The Terminal should have been a hit. There are so many good things and people within the confines of one movie, but they tried to make a greater movie than their time allowed. This forces them to cram too much into too little, and this stress brings even the best parts of the film crashing down. All the performances are strong; a shame they didn’t have a bit of a better vehicle.