The Terminal – a heart-warming drama about an ordinary man in extraordinary circumstances, who tries to make the best of his situation and succeeds in a very good manner. A Kracotian man, Victor Navorski (Tom Hanks), is stranded in an airport terminal due to a coup in his country and he’s forced to live there for many months, since his country’s new government was not recognized by the international community and so his papers were no longer valid. Indeed, the movie has some far-fetched instances that make you doubt they may ever happen in real life, but maybe that’s the beauty of it! Otherwise, is just a simple snapshot of an ordinary day! The character of Tom Hanks amazes by his power of accepting the situation of a stateless man who does all he can to cope with it in order to survive. He’s a good person, compassionate and coming from a poor country, used with the hardships of life, never complaining, just doing his best. What impressed me most is his reason for such a long trip to America: to fulfill a promise he made to his dying dad - getting an autograph from a famous jazz singer, whose fan was his father. The movie has lots of hilarious moments, interlaced with scenes of emotional load that makes you laugh and cry at the same time. While watching, I felt I can do better myself, seeing how simple people in the terminal were helping Nagorski, a nobody, to survive in the airport for months. Human solidarity, compassion, strength of character, these are the feelings conveyed to me by the movie. Each of the characters has a story and by living there, Victor becomes familiar with their lives and partly influences everybody in a good sense. And of course, to make the story more Hollywood-like, there is also a short romance between Victor and Amelia (Catherine Zeta-Jones), a stewardess who always picks the wrong guy and still longing for happiness. The bad guy in the movie comes in the character of the security officer, classical bureaucrat Frank Dixon (Stanley Tucci). His main concern is to get rid of Victor from the terminal and make him somebody else’s problem. There are some more funny and lovable characters in the movie, people whom you’d like to meet and be friends with. So the story is good, dialogues are easy to follow, the decor seems very real, with all the details of an airport terminal put in place, but this is how we are already used Spielberg productions to be. The performance of the actors is of high-quality, as expected from Tom Hanks, Catherine Zeta-Jones etc. I really enjoyed watching the movie and I warmly recommend it to everybody.
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I heard this film was rather boring but I still want to see it - you make it sound much better and you're right, with 2 great actors it's got to be fairly good! Lucie xxx
Like an airport running at peak efficiency,The Terminalglides on the consummate skills of ... more
its director and star. Having refined their collaborative chemistry onSaving Private RyanandCatch Me if You Can, Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks mesh like the prec...
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Life is waiting... After arriving at New York's JFK airport Viktor Navorski (Tom Hanks) ... more
gets unwittingly tied in bureaucratic glitches that make it impossible for him to return to his home country or enter the U.S.! Now caught up in the richly compl...
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