Tom Hanks, for the third time under director Steven Spielberg, as a monolingual visitor from abroad, forced to make a temporary home for himself in the International Transit Lounge at JFK Airport (amid numberless corporate plugs: Hugo Boss, Borders, Sbarro, etc.) when a military coup unsettles his fictitious homeland of Krakozhia, invalidating his passport and entry visa, while simultaneously closing off his return route. A man without a country, but not without a bed and all the amenities: a nest feathered in a construction zone of the airport unaccountably outside the sweep of security patrols. The pity-please protagonist -- part Chaplin-esque, part Capra-esque, part Kafka-esque -- has one scene of emotional turmoil over the carnage back home, then never seems to give it another thought. In the meantime -- month after month of it -- he gets involved deeplier and deeplier with officious officials, affable laborers, a beautiful stewardess. There is much mangling of language for comic effect -- mispronunciation, misunderstanding, misuse -- though his increasing fluency in English fluctuates widely depending upon where the joke lies. Even by Spielberg's standards, the treacle runs high, but the unwritten proscriptions against "plot spoilers" -- e.g., the contents of the Planter's Peanuts tin that the foreigner carries with him, the deathbed promise to his father, the entire purpose of his visit to the States, the eventual fulfillment of it -- will allow the reviewer to keep his head above the molasses. Stanley Tucci, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Chi McBride, Diego Luna. (2004) — Duncan Shepherd
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