by Tim Gordon
Style clashes substance in a major way in the film noirish directorial debut of Vaughn Stein, the electrically beautiful but vacuous thriller, Terminal.
The film centers on a pair of hitmen who agree to take on a high-risk mission for a mysterious employer and a large paycheck. Along the way, they encounter a woman (Margot Robbie) who may be more involved in their mission than they had realized.
On the surface, Stein’s story has a hip film-noir futuristic story quality featuring an attractive lead in Robbie and featuring notable supporting turns from both Simon Pegg and Mike Myers. Despite these apparent advantages, the film gets off to a murky start and unfortunately never recovers. We see a mysterious woman making a deal with an unknown mobster followed by a string of convoluted subplots that ultimately tie together but take such a long and winding road to get there, emotionally the audience tapped out long before the finish.
The one thing that the film has going for it is the Austrailian beauty of Robbie who truly gives it her all but despite her presence, there is only so much cinematic capital that she can bring to this story that is DOA. By the time we get to the film’s final twist, and although it was somewhat interesting I discovered that I no longer cared – and neither will you.
It is probably a good reason Terminal is buried on Netflix, it serves its purpose as content fodder for the streaming giant but it is exactly where it belongs in their cinematic scrapheap.
Grade: D
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