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"The Terminal" is the second highly anticipated movie this year by a big name director that, halfway through, had me sighing in disappointment.

The first was Tim Burton's "Big Fish", a movie so contrived and lifeless it made me wonder what happened to the wonder kind who gave us Edward Scissorhands and Beetlejuice.

The Terminal wasn't AS bad, and, in fact, has some really great moments only a director like Spielberg and an actor like Tom Hanks could deliver. There's a sequence in the beginning where Navorski discovers his home country has fallen into warfare and disarray, and desperately, fearfully runs around the Terminal looking for television sets that broadcast some snippet of news he's unable to understand anyway. This is a heartbreaking scene and I noticed I was sobbing only 15 minutes into the movie. This was a glorious setup that had me expecting a truthful, emotional, and brilliant Spielbergian parable on the hardships of immigration and the response they get from the country to strive so hard to come to. Granted, Navorski wasn't an immigrant, he was just a tourist, the obvious story to be told was about East meets West.

Instead, my blood started to chill and my shoulders sagged in my seat as the film fell victim to one cliché, forced Hollywood contrivance after another. Yes, Gupta the Janitor was funny but his dialogue was dismal (do you have an appointment? -not funny. a writers device trying to be "eccentric".)

The relationship Navorski develops with the airport workers was comic and touching on some levels (Chi McBride was brilliant as always and it was nice to see Diego Luna in a non sleazy role for once.) But their characters lacked any sense of realism or depth. The romance between Diego and the Customs Official girl could have been really sweet and compelling had the devices used to move it along (like Diego's bribing Navorski and the whole "he said/she said back and forth) not felt like the screenwriter was borrowing from the stock bin of Hollywood romances. There was no real sense of a crush or distant love from Luna's character and because of that, it lacked truth. And therefore, why should I bother caring?

That's how I felt about a lot of the movie. Catherine Zeta-Jones' character was so self centered and despicable in her devotion to a man she KNOWS is going to hurt her that I rolled my eyes every time she came on screen. Yeah, I get it. She reads history books (writer's device) she rambles on about Napleon (writer's device) and she's so hectic and neurotic in her life that she asks strange foreigners she's never met if they'd like to have dinner (writer's device.) I love Catherine Zeta-Jones and I know she's an amazing actress but her character was a complete fabrication from start to finish. The one, ONE touching moment between her and Hanks comes when he explains to her what's in the Planters can and more so why he came to this country. The acting she does without saying any words was the only other moment in this film where I almost cried, and yet it falls short because neither the setup nor the payoff of the relationship between her and Navorski are fulfilling or honest in any way, shape, or form. (Although, to be fair, their "date" on the patio with Gupta juggling the hoops was sheer comic brilliance)

The world of Independent Film has changed my view of movies so profoundly that it's hard, really hard, to watch a Hollywood movie now and not find myself giggling or sighing at the abundance of recycled clichés and untruthful characters. I understand that most of these big studio pictures are produced for one reason: to entertain the majority of the populous, most of whom don't see past the stereotypes and are easily amused, and let them leave the theater feeling good about life. And you know what, that's cool. Everyone deserves to have a good time at the movies. But when that "good time" is being helmed by one of the best of the best filmmakers the medium has ever seen, as I'll rightfully say Spielberg is, I expect a little, no, a LOT better than what one of your standard second tier Hollywood directors would churn out. Even when Spielberg is falling back on cliché (Jurassic Park, Minority Report, and, to some extent, Saving Private Ryan), he does it so deft fully and well that it becomes original and stands out as a great film. The Terminal was not so lucky.

It has some great comic moments in the tradition of Buster Keaton, and it's worth watching for Hanks' and Tucci's performance as well as Janusz Kaminski's always awe-inspiring cinematography. But, in the end, you might sit there and wish the filmmakers had done better, if only because you know they can.

Put simply, I think this film is a masterpiece. To call it anti-American is quite arrogant and uneducated, as I feel it is, above all, extra-American, meaning it portrays an entire global community and the effect a single event in the world can have. As Americans, we are understandably still heartbroken over the tragedy and may never fully recover, but if we're smart then we need to see that an entire non-American culture exists outside our little bowl and can't be expected to react, sympathize, and contribute in the same way or in ways we'd like. If a family down the street from you loses a loved one, naturally you're going to feel bad for them, but if you never knew them you're not going to be grief stricken, and no one would expect you too. Furthermore, if you had prior resentment against that family, it would still surface and mar your ability to sympathize. Does that mean you're a bad person? Of course not. But it illustrates the relativity of the impact a tragic event can have on everyone.

For one, I thought this was best illustrated in the segments from Iran, England, Bosnia, and Burkina-Faso.

In Iran, we're introduced to children who are (summed up in the first minute of film) refugees from their home country, building brick buildings to survive potential bombings, and living in dirt. And yet they all giggle and laugh and go on as naive children. And, in all honesty, why should they be effected by September 11? Bosnia's short portrays a culture that has been under a state of perpetual grief for as long as they can remember, and they still march in defiant protest and solemn anger over the death of their loved ones. Sure, news of 9-11 effects them, but in a land this morose and unhappy it's as if they have no more grief to give. Burkina-Faso's, while funny, illustrated a good point: The children don't hunt down who they think is Bin Laden because they are angry and vengeful, they do it for the money. They are, beneath it all, capitalists, the difference being they wanted money for good cause, unlike our government who disgustingly capitalized on 9-11 for the patriotism agenda.

And, perhaps Loach's London segment was the most effective in that it was a tearful way of saying "I feel your pain...maybe you could feel ours..?" How many people (especially in my generation) really know about the horrific history of Chile, and moreso, that our government was behind it? Nowhere do I see Ken Loach saying "shame on you America!!!" (as many have interpreted), but rather I see a wounded survivor in a heartfelt request for the same empathy he has for us on September 11. I'm sure the murder of Allende means a lot more to Chileans than the WTC bombings ever will, just as WTC will always mean more to us than the murder of Allende..

I admired the Mexican segment as an auditory experience but (CURSES!) the projector broke down and the sound got out of sync, thus completely marring the effect. Egypt's segment was kind of lame in it's technique but brought up an EXTREMELY good point: We always label civilians innocent, and in many respects we are, but to a terrorist, since the U.S. and Israel are democracies, we (supposedly) elect the leaders who commit atrocities against their people. Therefore, we are not innocent. A warped perspective, yes, but a valuable insight into the mind of the enemy.

Emotionally I thought the French segment was the most brilliant, as it characterized the attitude of this whole film. Focusing on the woman's deafness we are put in her head and experience, for a brief moment, what it's like to be deaf, the same as we might experience what it's like to be foreign or non English speaking. And as an audio-visual experience it was unforgettable. Only when her boyfriend comes home does the effect of the tragedy really strike her, and it reminded me that we take our senses for granted. I would love to see an entire movie from a deaf perspective.

The two low points in this film were the American and Japanese. I admired Sean Penn's story but hated his technique. Split screens and repeat-frames are tastelessly self indulgent (key word here is indulgent) and the Japanese short, while clever and striking, felt rather out of place here. I get the "Holy War" statement but it's better suited for another film and another argument. The Indian segment, while also a touching story, was sadly unimaginative and more matter-of-fact. Israel's short, as a one-shot, was creative, but the characters were annoying and laughably exaggerated.

What this film allows is for us all to levitate above the planet and gaze down on an entire global culture and how a single event effects it. I'm sorry if Americans are offended and see this as "anti-American propaganda" but that speaks of just plain not getting it. Every nation and every culture is as guilty as we are innocent. But to believe our tragedies are superior and carry more weight sentimentally is wrong and the gross effect of isolation and nationalism. We confine ourselves inside nations and borders and collective mentalities and forget that beneath (or perhaps above) all the ideology, we're all human beings and deserve to be treated as such.

A marvelous, unforgettable film.