Publication Date: 04-05-2026

The Terminal (2004) review

Dir. Steven Spielberg

By: Steve Pulaski

Rating: ★★★½

It wasn’t until I was aimlessly wandering the DVD aisle at Goodwill this weekend did I realize that Steven Spielberg’s The Terminal was gifted a limited edition three-disc DVD release back in 2004. I couldn’t buy it fast enough. Despite seemingly being ranked as one of Spielberg’s middling, or even weaker efforts, I find this story to be one of his most touchingly human. Paradoxically, it shows America as a country where anything is possible for immigrants if they can successful navigate the tangled web of bureaucracy that often hampers their ability to get started.

In The Terminal, Tom Hanks is Viktor Navorski, who travels from the fictional country of Krakozhia to the John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York. While in the air, Viktor’s native country experienced a radical revolution, rendering all planes in and out of the country halted. His passport and credit cards are no longer valid either, meaning he can’t enter the United States. He has slipped through a rare, unexpected crack that basically states he can’t go forward or backwards. He has can’t pass “Go” nor collect $200.

His home base is the airport, a large and, literally, foreign world to Viktor, who can’t speak English fluently. He spends most of his time desperately seeking money by returning luggage carts for a quarter a piece so he can have his next meal, or settling for saltine crackers and ketchup. He sleeps restlessly on rows of chairs. There’s a comedy to be made of this material, and while there’s light-hearted humor sprinkled throughout, Sacha Gervasi and Jeff Nathanson’s script wisely focuses on the human drama.

Acting Field Commissioner Frank Dixon (Stanley Tucci) questions Viktor’s strange behavior and his unhinged abiding of the rules. He doesn’t resist, yell, scream, or get flustered. He just abides. Dixon wants Viktor out of his care, and tries to force him out the doors of the airport. Much to his dismay, Viktor chooses to follow the rules and stay put until the light is green. There is something so very admirable about a character who can cope peacefully in a cryptic and stressful situation.

Being that no airport could feasibly pause their facilities for a movie production of this size and duration, the film’s setting was largely constructed in a hangar in Palmdale. It looks marvelous. According to Spielberg, everything functions as it would in real life, with real food and drinks in the designated outlets, real working stoves in the food court, bathrooms, escalators, etc. It looks bustling, and feels lived-in.

The Terminal has such a strong story with well-developed characters that it doesn’t need to resort to pictorial aspects as a means of humor and substance. Conversely, Scenes from a Mall was about a married couple working out their marital differences, in public, while walking around a mall. There were so many unnecessary elements, like a cloyingly unfunny mime, wandering around with them coupled with Woody Allen’s character lugging around a huge yellow surfboard for the majority of the film. Those elements felt like gratuitous, impetuous distractions.

Instead, Spielberg’s film is peppered with a diverse crop of individuals. Gupta (Kumar Pallana) is a janitor, who requires “appointments” to look through his trash. Diego Luna is a food deliverer who yearns for the attention of a Customs and Border Protections Officer (Zoe Saldaña), as Viktor tries to lend a hand. Catherine Zeta-Jones is Amelia, a flight attendant who picks the worst men and loves reading books on people like Napoleon.

The Terminal dodges caricatures and dramatic dead-ends by providing development and substance to each one it introduces. When we go to an airport, we don’t care about the janitor, the security guards, the people in there, or the people flying the plane; we care about getting to our desired destination, on time, and in one piece. Spielberg has created a wonderful, whimsical, optimistic, yet sometimes poignant story focusing on a man’s unfortunate experience in purgatory without turning it into a ridiculous epiphany or a laugh riot.

Starring: Tom Hanks, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Stanley Tucci, Barry Shabaka Henley, Kumar Pallana, Diego Luna, and Zoe Saldaña. Directed by: Steven Spielberg.