I didn’t know why I wasn’t satisfied at the end of The Terminal, so I headed to ye olde internet to find out. Another reviewer had my opinion well-verbalized, but I will paraphrase—it didn’t deliver on the multiple plot promises that it made. While most viewers will be aware of the fact that the film was based on a real life incident, a fact that the production company doesn’t quite admit, The Terminal livens things up by adding an unlikely romance between Tom Hanks’ Viktor Navorski, and a flight attendant (played by Catherine Zeta-Jones) with truly copious emotional baggage, as well as a cast of good-natured supporting parts whose very presences were intended to warm the heart.

Tom Hanks’ character, Viktor Navorski, finds himself in the Kafka-esque setting of being stateless in an airport terminal, not allowed to leave into the United States. Steven Spielberg’s vision expands from there, supposedly improving on the real life situation from which The Terminal takes its cue. Such a frustrating situation would be ripe enough for either a comedy or more likely a drama, revolving around the bureaucracy that caused it, but most of The Terminal just wasn’t funny or dramatic. Instead, the unlikely elements of fantasy pop up, including scenes where Navorski spontaneously learns English, negotiates for another passenger’s freedom, gets a job, and builds a mosaic fountain for his stewardess paramour. When the purpose of Navorski’s visit to the U.S. is finally disclosed, it is hard to understand why it had been under wraps in the first place. Any one of the tangents that the film constructs would have made an interesting plot to follow through on, but none of them lives up to its expectation. The true story that happened to Iranian Merhan Karimi Nasseri must have not impressed Spielberg enough. If Nasseri ever leaves Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris, perhaps he could seek an answer why, but until then Mr. Spielberg might find him at Roissy 1.

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