Starring: Tom Hanks, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Stanley Tucci
Director: Steven Spielberg
Rated: PG
FOR those who travel, two hours watching people working and waiting in an airport terminal may create some sense of deja vu.
The terminal here is JFK in New York.
On paper, the basic plot may seem far-fetched. However, it is given some plausibility as we follow the fate of Victor H, a visitor to the US who finds himself falling into an administrative crack that lasts for nine months. While he was in the air, there was a revolution in his eastern European nation which has led to all visas being declared invalid. The US has not recognised the interim government.
The airport is administered by officials who live by the book and the rules and are not strong on compassion. In fact, they wish he would make a break for it so that the ‘unacceptable’ visitor could be arrested by another authority.
It makes you wonder what on earth you would do in a similar situation. The regulations are against you. You have very limited language. You have very little money. People are suspicious.
Tom Hanks played Victor sympathetically, as might be expected. Stanley Tucci gives a strong performance as the airport boss, stubborn, sometimes wily, always concerned about his own position above all else. Catherine Zeta-Jones is a friendly flight attendant.
The film dawdles sometimes. After all, two hours is quite a long time to stay in an airport at the best of times.
But, the film grows on you and takes on something of a contemporary fairytale as Victor settles in at Gate 67 and befriends many of the staff, even acting as a matchmaker with the passport control officer who stamps his documents every day as ‘unacceptable’.
Steven Spielberg’s films are always touched with sentiment, easily to be dismissed as ‘too American’.
It is Spielberg raising some empathy for migrants and asylum seekers and their being victims of red tape. It is also Spielberg giving the Americans something ‘feel good’ at a difficult political time.
