The Terminal

What do a ten-year-old child, a mentally handicapped individual, and a resident of the former Eastern Bloc have in common? In the context of Hollywood screenwriting, almost everything. They are, in fact, popular screenwriting crutches when a film needs to break through some rigid system by way of endearingly naive characters who explain to us with good-natured irony the beauty in the little things, the pointlessness of order and restrictions, or some other such Dušek. The Terminal had the potential to join my favorites on the list of movies that turn vast buildings into chaotic and autonomous organisms (Die Hard 2, Control, Subway, Delicatessen) full of oddball characters, forgotten rooms and secret passages, places where everyone has their mysterious calling. And yet the primary purpose of a film should not be to try to lure back to airport terminals the passengers who disappeared in fear after 9/11. It's not the only film with a similar purpose (see Up in the Air), but by trying to humanize the draconian screening measures at American airports it simply runs into screenwriting alleys you can't turn around in. The notion that at any time in the last 20 years, someone at a New York airport has made one of its chairs into his own flat, built his own fountain, had all the workers at the shops there winking hello at him, or as a junior immigration officer told a senior immigration officer that he could learn a little humanity from an Eastern European immigrant, is squeezed out of the fingertips by a team of people who clearly no longer have much contact with reality but feel they should be lecturing us about it. The scene where the protagonist, in some fit of spontaneity, makes a piece of wood paneling overnight and gets a job as a laborer gets my bleeding-ass screenwriting award. (01/31/2022)

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)

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)

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)

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)