  Starring Tom Hanks, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Stanley Tucci, Chi McBride, Diego Luna, Barry Shabaka Henley, Zoe Saldana, and Eddie Jones. Directed by Steven Spielberg. The Terminal tells the story of Viktor Navorski (Hanks), a visitor to New York City from Eastern Europe, whose homeland erupts in a fiery coup while he is in the air en route to America. Stranded at JFK International Airport with a passport from nowhere, he is unauthorized to actually enter the United States and must improvise his days and nights in the terminal's international transit lounge until the war at home is over. As the weeks and months stretch on, Viktor finds the compressed universe of the terminal to be a richly complex world of absurdity, generosity, ambition, amusement, status, serendipity and even romance with a beautiful flight attendant (Zeta-Jones). When I first heard about The Terminal back in April, my first thought was "Tom Hanks is playing a foreign guy?
" I guess that I didn't give too much thought to the story behind the movie. Just recently, however, I discovered that the movie was actually inspired by a real man who has been living in an airport terminal in France for the past 16 years. Although it sounds like a fabricated story, it's actually true. You would think that there would be some kind of law that would prohibit someone from living in an airport, but I guess that it is allowed under the circumstances. Beside this point, I ended up seeing The Terminal tonight. I went in to the theater expecting another "romantic comedy" because that's what I had heard it described as, and what I got was another level of the genre. It was a romantic comedy that wasn't overly predictable, and one that allowed time for character development, unlike most of its kind. In fact, I probably wouldn't even call it a romantic comedy because it wasn't very romantic per say.
Anyway, I thought that Tom Hanks did a great job as the main character Victor Navorski. Although I have heard his accent described as "laughable," I thought that he implemented it very well into the character and didn't try to force it too much. The humor from his character comes more from the situation than from gimmicks. (I also got some laughs out of the character Gupta, played by Kumar Pallanatucci, who is in many of the Wes Anderson / Owen Wilson movies.
) Even though this is a different kind of movie for Steven Spielberg, he retained his chemistry with Tom Hanks, and he does a great job with the environment of the terminal. And last, but definitely not least, I have to mention the great work of cinematographer Janusz Kaminski, who really makes the terminal authentic, despite the fact that the movie was mostly shot on a set. 
