2004

June 29, 2004
Oakridge
USA
English / French / Russian
128 minutes

Life Is Waiting -- THE TERMINAL

Enjoyable, if pretty light, story of a guy from a fictional Russian/Baltic-ish country whose homeland undergoes a coup just as he arrives at JFK. His passport is no longer valid and he is forced to live in the airport until the US Government acknowledges the new government.

Hanks is as good as you'd expect. He masters an accent with skill. The lighting and music were pure Speilberg. We never have to decide how we feel because he does it for us. Stanley Tucci plays a Customs guy who is by-the-book to the point of being blind to the way things are. There is really no doubt as we watch this who will come out victorious.

There's one of those scenes where a rag tag band of people use items at their disposal to help one of their members woo a woman. There is a big reveal at the end that choked me up even though I pissed at the way I was played.

Technically flawless, but without much soul.

4.9 Critical Consensus
***^ Ebert
*** Berardinelli
**^ EW