The Terminal

(Herald rating: **)

Been to the United States for a holiday lately? Been injected, inspected, detected, infected, digitised, fingerprinted, when all you wanted to do was take the kids to Disneyland? If so, you may have a little difficulty in seeing the funny side of this Spielberg-Hanks rom-com.

Steven Spielberg is a wonderful film-maker, Tom Hanks is a superbly understated Mr Everyman, perhaps better at portraying the little guy eternally blindsided by the world around him than any other actor, including James Stewart. Sorry, guys, have you read those polls lately? The rest of the world doesn't find a paranoid, fundamentalist America particularly amusing.

Hanks' character is Viktor Navorski, who arrives in JFK airport from the fictional Eastern European state of Krakozhia just as there's been a coup back home.

This means that he is a stateless person because the US of A doesn't have diplomatic relations with the new regime.

Frank Dixon (Stanley Tucci), who is portrayed as an unfeeling immigration official but whom most will recognise as a typical representative of his bureaucracy, allows him to live in the arrivals hall, provided he does not trespass into officially recognised US territory.

Fortunately for Viktor, this means he has access to all the benefits of the modern consumer society — Starbucks, McDonald's, you get the drift — that are the aspiration of residents of impoverished, backwards Eastern European nations subject to rapid changes of government. He even begins a relationship with Amelia, a lonely flight attendant played by Catherine Zeta-Jones.

This movie may have worked had Peter Sellers or Alec Guiness been available to play the people Viktor meets in his wanderings around the terminal: the elderly Indian cleaner, the Hispanic kitchenhand, the black baggage handler. Here, it descends into sentimental claptrap that masks the reality of the world we are obligated to live in. Am I harsh? The BBC wrote, "The Terminal is like standing under a waterfall of vomit for two hours and occasionally being let out for air."

There are no features on the regular DVD, but fans may want to track down the 3-disc limited edition.

DVD, video rental out now