I had said not to expect many more reviews of Steven Spielberg-directed features. It's something of a surprise to myself that I took only about seven months to get to another. Now I've seen all that he's directed since The Last Crusade.
Tom Hanks plays Viktor Navorski, a present-day airline customer from a fictitious nation apparently near Russia. During his flight, his homeland experiences a coup d'etat, resulting in a most extraordinary situation for himself: The U.S. neither recognizes his passport nor can send him back any time soon, so his only legal option is to stay at this NYC airport indefinitely. (If this sounds implausible, know that a real-life Iranian had to wait 18 years in a Parisian airport after the 1979 revolution.) Note that this comes in the first few minutes, so the running theme of the whole story is waiting, but I assure you that things do happen before Viktor's freedom....
Ads gave me the impression that this was more comedy than drama, but it really is a serious situation for Viktor. It'd be hard enough without his initially poor English skills and complete lack of spendable money or lawful employability. The cold new airport director pro tempore (Stanley Tucci) hopes for an excuse to be rid of his embarrassing presence, even if it means sending a victim of circumstance to prison. Now there's someone who plays by the rules and still fights dirty.
Fortunately, Viktor is a resourceful man. He doesn't seem to take long to shed his Borat-like incompatibility for charm. The vast majority of the airport staff, especially of foreign nationalities and ethnic minorities (hello, Diego Luna and Zoe Saldana), moves from sympathizing to outright liking him. He even sparks a little romance.
Sappy? Well, yes. You might call some moments adorable. But I wouldn't call it formulaic, given some things that didn't happen. Only near the end do we learn why he came to America in the first place, and I'd never have guessed it from the clues.
As I'd presumed, TT doesn't make the upper half of Spielberg's feats in my book. Nevertheless, I found it good for smiles and a few chuckles. Maybe I shouldn't have waited this long to check it out.
No comments:
Post a Comment