Tom Hanks plays Victor Navorsky, a traveller from a fictional East European country that's taken over by a military coup, leaving him stranded at JFK Airport with a passport that's no longer valid.
Airport security boss, Frank Dixon (Stanley Tucci) thinks the situation might ruin his chances of promotion. So he lets Victor loose in the transit lounge hoping he'll escape and become someone else's problem. But Victor is too moral to do anything more than improvise a new life within this microcosm. He forms relationships with the ground crew. The most hilarious of these is janitor Gupta played by Kumar Pallana who steals the show. Of course romance rears its head in the form of a beautiful flight attendant, Amelia (Catherine Zeta-Jones).
The film is loosely based on the true story of an Iranian immigrant who has lived in a French airport for 16 years, but it's utterly ridiculous to believe that this scenario could be possible in post 9/11 America. Heavily reliant on physical humour, exaggerated cultural stereo types and meandering dialogue, The Terminal falls short of the runway.
