The Terminal

March 12, 2005 - A 2004 comedy from director Steven Spielberg. Starring Tom Hanks, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Stanley Tucci.

Hanks plays Victor Navorski, a man from some country near Russia. He arrives at JFK in New York to find that there's been an attempted coup in his home country. Tucci oversees customs or something, and he tries to explain to Victor that the US no longer recognizes his country's government, therefore his visa is no good. And, therefore, Victor can't enter the US, i.e. leave the international terminal.

So, Victor makes himself at home in the terminal, makes friends with some of the people who work there, finds a job in the terminal and falls for Amelia, a stewardess played by Zeta-Jones. It takes a while, but eventually we find out why Victor came to the US and why he's willing to wait so long (nine months!) for his chance to leave the terminal and visit NYC.

Overall review: ** I guess something like this actually happened in France, but I can't imagine it ever happening here. Not in this day and age (and this movie was made well after 9/11). Hanks was OK, and I thought Tucci did well. But, the movie was more than two hours long and probably could have benefited from being shorter.