The Terminal

It's the little things that make this film great and in a way brilliant. Unfortunately, that only applies to the first half. Once the main character gets jaded, the plot starts to get more American and isn't as entertaining. Victor Navorski's character certainly has a lot in common with Forrest Gump. I really enjoyed his good-heartedness and ingenuity. And given the situation he's in, there are a few elements from Cast Away as well. It's no fun crashing at an airport... unless Tom Hanks is the one crashing there. 4 stars. (11/29/2011)

A truly beautiful film, built primarily on the brilliant performance of Tom Hanks, without him, even Spielberg would have had a very difficult time. But this is how you can make a funny and touching romantic story, which can perhaps only be faulted for being a truly reprehensible waste of the Spielbergian language – the entire second half does not correspond to the greatest director of our time, but to a regular Hollywood fairy tale on the theme of "romance for the whole family"... Still, considering my platonic love for the gorgeous Catherine, a fine film :)) 80% (06/02/2012)

The first half of The Terminal is fantastic. The endearing and sophisticated episodic humour and another captivating (previously unseen) setting for Tom Hanks’s masterful acting make for a simple yet irresistible movie without even the smallest flaw in its beauty. However, that beauty fades with the entrance of the bad guy and a love story, and the film slips to the level of a standard family movies of the kind for which the services of Chris Columbus and co. are usually engaged. Catch Me if You Can was more coherent, more precise and more distinctive. (10/05/2004)

This movie just skims the surface and never goes into depth. The screenplay isn’t one of the best ever, the whole storyline involving Catherine is pointless, but still... Spielberg is too good a director and Hanks too good an actor for this movie to be merely mediocre. It’s more like a pleasant relax movie that gets to you; it’s much better in the first “short stories" part than in the second part where it is too focused on the love story and obligations from the past. (02/27/2005)

Very nice thing. The first half, with the brilliantly confused Hanks and his delicious accent, is very funny and brisk, the love story with the stewardess (the really beautiful Zeta-Jones) is pleasant, the non-clichéd climax goes against the established templates – I had imagined something else, but I’m glad Spielberg (and the screenwriter) surprised me. Even the ending was within acceptable limits, there was no violent playing on emotions (so typical of Spielberg). Also a huge compliment to the production team who built a fully functional airport hall especially for this film, hats off to them. A small surprise to me was the poor financial response from American audiences, could the Hanks-Spielberg star pairing no longer be a sure bet? Together with overseas earnings, Terminal just about paid for itself. PS: A message for golfista: you're wrong, kid. Considering that about 50 percent of the revenue goes to the cinema operators, with 218 million earnings, that's about a hundred million for DreamWorks, so as I said – Spielberg probably wasn't too happy. (01/13/2005)