My Review of "Terminal"

Tom Hanks must have a really good agent to vet all of his movies for him. There's only a handful of movies that he starred in that I don't really like. For the most part he's only starred in good movies. The movies that I don't like at least had interesting ideas that I'm sure he thought was really good at the time. Recently, he's been making movies that don't really peak my interest.

This is the case with The Terminal but this movie came out back in 2004. This was probably also the height of Tom Hanks career as a leading man in the box office. He's still a box office draw but he is not at the same level as he was back in the late 90's to the early 2000's. In those years, he was probably the biggest star in Hollywood.

The Terminal is about an eastern European man by the name of Viktor Navorski, played by Tom Hanks. He's made a holiday trip to New York city but when his plane reaches his destination there's turmoil in his home country. Political turmoil had erased his country from existence so he can't enter New York city nor go back to his home country. He's stuck in the airport until something changes.

Now do you see why I wasn't interested in this movie? Well, that's the surface of the movie. There's a lot more to the movie but I never remembered the trailers for this movie explaining this. He meets a ton of people at the airport and he's actually a really nice and honest guy.

He makes friends everywhere and even tries to meet up with a romantic partner as well. There's tons of hi-jinx and they even added a villain to the story. The villain's motivation is mostly due to his own ego which is really cool because they constantly talk about Napoleon in this movie. It's very clever how they included that in the dialogue when the movie itself has its own Napoleon character.

As I continued to watch the movie I noticed myself getting sucked into the movie. They don't make movies like this anymore. There's absolutely no violence or CGI in this movie and it totally pulled me in.

This movie is more about character development. We understand the complexities with each of the characters. Some of the characters were a little one dimensional but they helped to serve the Viktor's obstacles and challenges living in the airport.

There are a surprising amount of stars in this movie that include: Zoe Saldana, Stanley Tucci (as great as ever), Diego Luna and Catherine Zeta-Jones. The whole cast was great in this movie. Kumar Pallana who plays Gupta was a little bit out there but was nice for comic relief. His comic relief, although funny was a bit off with the tone of the movie.

I was surprised at the sheer amount of emotions that ran through me while watching this movie. I could be angry, sad or happy in a matter of minutes with this movie. They really brought a whole lot in this movie and that's why I thought it was a pleasant surprise. I'm sad that I missed out on this movie for so long but I'm glad that I finally got to see it.

Overall, I would say that this movie is more than meets the eyes. You have to get over the concept and just watch it. I guarantee that it will pull you in with its charm because it happened to me. They were able to sweep me off my feet and fall in love with this movie. That's why I have to give this movie a 8.5 out of 10. I would recommend this to all my friends and re-watch it when I get the chance. It's that good.