The Terminal

Out of the Dreamworks studio comes this charming but innocuous romantic drama set almost entirely in the confines of JFK airport. It’s not clear whether this was originally modelled on a European subtitled film a few years ago that hit upon the same idea, of a young man travelling who ends up stuck in transit at an airport, unable to enter the country he is travelling to and unable to go back to his own.

Hanks here plays Viktor Navorski, a building contractor, arriving on a short holiday to New York and intending to stay at the Ramada Inn. He arrives without a visa and so cannot enter the US officially. He can’t return to his own country as a military coup has been staged overnight and on arrival at the US airport, his country is at war.

Head of airport authorities Dixon (Tucci) explains that Viktor must stay in the International Transit Lounge until the situation is rectified. That takes time, so Viktor makes his own bedroom out of a part of the airport under construction, and then gradually learns English and getting to know everyone becomes something of a celebrity as the staff admire his resourcefulness and the cheerful way he refuses to get depressed.

Viktor helps out other staff, begins to irritate Dixon and gets to know an air hostess (a fetching Zeta-Jones in a stewardess’s uniform). It’s a clever film, a kind of Sleepless in Seattle set in airport lounge. Tom Hanks and Catherine Zeta-Jones build up a touching friendship, there’s plenty of incidents involving the eccentric but resourceful Viktor to keep you amused, and those with an intellectual bent will enjoy the legal dilemmas faced by Airport chief Dixon (a convincing Stanley Tucci).

Some may feel with good reason that The Terminal paints a rosy congenial picture of an immigration system – America, land of the brave, where many have a right to enter and to live, where officials turn a blind eye and let one or two slip through the net – it may not be like that in reality one assumes. Mostly though this is an enjoyable film with useful jokes that charms into liking this man’s resourcefulness in the face of adversity.

Matt Arnoldi