Terminal

Unknown, bewildered and mysterious. Those are the words that appear across your mind as this tarted-up noir feelings cartoon shows itself with flamboyant colors spread around the hollow space of the ominous underground of terminal.

This dark tale focuses on a few key characters and their conversations and meet-ups with a deranged waitress played by none other than the charming with talents, Margot Robbie. The Terminal opens with Ms. Robbie as Annie who meets with a priest that will lead to a number of assassinations and overly complicated double crosses which is unbeknownst to the audience before the story uncovers itself layer by layer.

The plot is hazy and foggy for the first ride of 20 minutes but it does take shape beyond that that gives the thinking of alerting the audience to stop daydreaming and start paying attention as the story begins to properly revolve and complete its messy puzzles.

Most of the plot and character developments here willingly to take in the form of twists. There are three major twists deliver within this movie and two of them are quite unexpected but stay to its relevancy of the unnecessary draggy and hard-boiled dialogues.

Encountering the frequent odd happenings and disjointing scenes, time doesn't always move in a linear fashion here. The reason here is because Terminal is mainly relegated to two separate narratives that never quite intersect as a whole. It touches briefly upon another and moves on again with their story back and forth. What is even worse is those two separate entities entitle to slow down the front gear with the misdirection of irrelevant talkings however, they later on become somewhat important for the twists at the end gear that the audience could never see beforehand.

Robbie serves as the personification of what we imagine a femme fatale would be, she delivers her character deep into dark territories as her face morphs into an evil-smiling mad scientist and scary-looking enchantress, hoping that the people watching may madly falling in love with her overly done character, or so you thought. Of course, Robbie does well with her performance as usual but the servings of the substances for the movie lacks the foundation of a truly good movie even far from being a masterpiece artistry of work.

While the recent trailers and neon-lighted posters let on that this is a revenge story, well not so much. It's more of having a porn-fashioned movie with mesmerizing colors and sparkling environments igniting the dark empty world of crime.

Verdict: 49/100. Hands down, I can guarantee it is one of 2018's best looking visuals, the visually stunning colors and dazzling cinematography mimics Suicide Squad, another movie with the presence of Robbie of a different genre that holds the identity of the true definition of 'style over substance'. Robbie may save this movie, cracking the judgments on two sides of which she may or may not. If you love Margot Robbie, then give it a try. Her performance here is the solid proof for her to get that Harley Quinn spin-off film made, already.

Terminal was ripped to shreds by critics, I see why but I don't think they gave it enough credit. There's a lot of futuristic noir flourishes, the movie is bathing in neon light and seedy environments. This isn't new, its Blade Runner-esque but the cinematography is admittedly gorgeous in this. Just because it has been done before (lately with Altered Carbon and Mute) doesn't make it any less impressive. It was a nice touch and it deserves to be mentioned, even if it doesn't quite save the movie.

The plot of Terminal is very reminiscent of Guy Ritchie's movies. There's some Snatch or Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels moments but the whole movie doesn't operate as well overall. We get introduced to a bunch of seedy characters with dubious morals. They all come in and out of this train station in the middle of the night and the common thread between them is the character of Annie (Margot Robbie). She's an assassin who works part-time as a waitress and stripper. Through her comings and goings, we meet a terminally ill teacher Bill (Simon Pegg), a pair of mismatched hitmen Vince (Dexter Fletcher) and Alfred (Max Irons) and an odd janitor Clinton (Mike Myers). How these interactions play into the larger plot is a mystery to us until the final turn. The setup isn't bad, we've seen it before and although there are plot holes, none of them were bad enough to completely derail the movie. It was enough to keep me interested but I did find my attention drifting in and out because of the lack of cohesion. As a story, its very middle of the road for the genre.

Any heat for this movie was likely due to Margot Robbie's involvement as the main character. She keeps climbing the ladder and its deserved, she's great and I consider myself a fan of hers. She's good in Terminal, she's surprisingly committed, and she carries the movie capably. I do agree with some of the other reviewers in that she comes off as British Harley Quinn, but she didn't phone it in. Pegg is his typical charming self, he's very low-key in this but he works well with Robbie and I particularly enjoyed the montage that they share near the tail-end of the movie. Fletcher and Irons were odd, neither of them were terrible but Fletcher was over doing it and Irons was a little stiff. It was nice to see Mike Myers again and I think he did about as well as he could have with the material. Its a big distance from where his character starts to where he ends up and it makes his performance a little awkward by the end.

I was down the middle on Terminal for most of its run time for all the reasons listed above. It was never stellar, but it had its moments. I was more than ready to just let it float the rest of the way to whatever normal twist ending it had up its sleeve and call it a day. But when the confrontation comes between Annie and Bill, the movie doesn't just dip its toes into a pool of nonsense/crazy, it cannonballs into it. I wasn't just snickering, I was laughing when Terminal ended. Its not that the twist it takes is new, its handled in such a rough and implausible manner that I was shocked. But it didn't derail the movie for me, it actually improved it. It made Terminal memorable and while I would never say that this movie is good, its going to hold a place in my memory for insane plot twists.

I feel a little guilty for giving Terminal as high of a rating as I have. I liked the style of the movie and some of the performances (notably Robbie, Pegg and some of Myers) were solid. But it never reached high enough for something great and in any other movie, that twist ending would have knocked it down to a 3 or a 4/10. But that ending pushed the movie from mediocre to so bad its good territory for me. I can't call Terminal excellent but if you enjoy campy cinema, this is something you should see. I'm giving Terminal a 6/10 and I feel like I'm being generous.

Despite some excellent acting performances this film didn't do much for me. I felt like it was trying too hard to be too many things. Using a mixture of various film makers styles it just didn't seem to provide anything fresh. The story telling method used too many twists to work successfully. If stylish visuals and multi layered stories are your main thing then give it a go. Otherwise you may find some of the negative comments and low scores this film has attracted to be justified.

My rating 5/10

Loaded with Alice references and quotes - but the only similarities in common with the classic tale is the theme of madness, which in this case was taken and ran with. This movie is decibel lit more style than substance, and curiosity will keep you moving through it despite the badly drawn plot. Characters did their best with what they were given.. Style over substance. It was just my style, really, if only there was more, anything more, to go on.

I thought it was an Excellent film. Noir style with a twist ending. Actors were excellent. Music was quality. Recommended