The Terminal

Free movie pass to see "The Terminal" with Tom Hanks and Catherine Zeta-Jones from Entertainment Weekly.

Loved it! I have a feeling this is going to be another Spielberg classic and will again have everybody talking about how Tom Hanks is the perfect actor to play the heroic EveryMan roles that he has played in the past.

The premise of the movie is that a man, Viktor Navorski (Tom Hanks) boards a plane and while in flight his country goes through a military coup that nullifies his government and leaves Viktor without a country and unable to enter the US. "Impossible!", I thought until I read that the movie had been inspired by the real life events of a man stranded in Paris.

Intrigued by this little tidbit and after tearing into the envelope Entertainment Weekly sent me containing my movie pass, I was off to see the movie. As I sat watching the film open I wondered if Tom Hanks would be able to convince me that he was supposed to be a foreigner. Then when he comes on screen and speaks...I'm convinced. Granted I'm no expert on Eastern European/Russian-sounding dialects but I sure thought he was foreign! Stanley Tucci appears as some kind of Director of Security for the US and I really couldn't help but love and hate him throughout the movie. His character is just a person trying to do his job to the best of his ability but is such a putz at times that I just wanted to smack him!

The thing that I think really made this movie work was the time it took to explain the problems Viktor had to deal with and how he went about solving those problems. Food was difficult since his country's currency had no value until he "discovered the quarters", where he discovers that returned carts gives you quarters. When Tucci's character discovers this and manages to take away this means of funding, Viktor is eventually approached by a guy who is too shy to speak to one of the customs officers himself so asks Viktor to find out things about her in exchange for airline meals.

The story continues to unspool in this fashion with witty dialog and insane scenerios where I found myself laughing my head off and rooting for Viktor. The amazing thing is that the reason for Viktor even coming to America is never revealed till nearly the end of the movie and the poignant revelation is astonishing...until I realized that the reason was something he could have easily asked one of the many friends he made at the airport to do for him. But of course that thought doesn't hit me till later and it doesn't really squash the overall tone of the movie, leaving me with the reaffirmation that life is ridiculously absurd and I'm just doing the best that I can.

This movie is definitely worth seeing...not neccessarily on the big screen for it's special effects but for the story itself...a movie that I really believe will become a favorite in the years ahead.