"The Terminal"

In Tom Hanks' last movie, the remake of "The Ladykillers," he played a role spun off of Alec Guinness' in the original. Here he's in a role that only Alec Guinness could have played (or maybe Peter Sellers). Guinness had a way of finding a flinty, obsessive edge inside his dreamy, gentle eccentrics, a way of making them seem more exotic bird than cuddly pet. Some of what Hanks does -- the silly stuff -- is fine, particularly one moment when his accent makes it appear he's cursing out Luna. But Hanks and Spielberg have conceived of the role as a dear, harmless little foreigner, the Esperanto Everyman. Even Chaplin's Little Tramp, in the early two-reelers, had some dirt and salaciousness in him. Viktor, however, is the simple villager unsullied by American reality and still enough of an innocent to believe in American ideals. Before anyone believes in "The Terminal" as a take on American xenophobia, they should think about its emasculated mascot of a hero.

"The Terminal" might have worked if it had been conceived of as the equivalent of an Ealing comedy, or if the Scottish director Bill Forsyth had had a crack at it. It would have meant cutting all the politics out and just making it about a man making do in an absurd position. (It would have been possible to make this movie and show the airport officials acting decently toward him). But that approach wouldn't allow Spielberg the lumpy e pluribus unum message he's waving around here. And as a filmmaker he seems to have lost the simplicity necessary for such an approach.

"The Terminal" is probably the worst-directed film Spielberg has ever made. A peculiarly rhythmless piece of work, it seems to go on forever, though nearly every one of the scenes is cut off before it has been dramatically developed. Or else it's shot and edited in a jumpy style that makes you feel as if you can't settle down to pay attention to what's going on. I'd like to give cinematographer Janusz Kaminski the benefit of the doubt and assume that the movie looks so blah because he's trying to capture the fluorescent, washed-out lighting of an airport terminal. Even if that's what Kaminski intends, it means we're stuck looking at these drab visuals for two hours.

Is "The Terminal" Steven Spielberg's idea of taking a break from the prestige message pictures his career has come to consist of? If it is, then he hasn't taken enough of a break. He's got an idea here for a quirky, small-scale comedy. But giving it the modest scale it needs wouldn't make it important enough to suit him. Cutting out all the rather brainless political content would make it a mere entertainment. So he has proceeded in a style and tone utterly inappropriate to the material. Is every script Spielberg attempts from now on going to have to be worked up to be worthy of him? His hero isn't the only guy stuck in no man's land.

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