Mark Reviews Movies: TERMINAL

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Review by Mark Dujsik | May 10, 2018

Life is unforgiving in the unnamed city—of the future or of some alternative past or present—of Terminal. It's sparsely populated, in the way that one might expect the elaborately designed and decorated soundstage for a semi-futuristic neo-noir to be. For all of its neon-infused lighting and grimy streets and almost pastel-hued interiors, the city appears to be a place where only a handful of people live, work, or visit. Primarily, though, these people play at games involving psychological torment, threats of physical violence, and actual murder.

The city itself is at the heart of writer/director Vaughn Stein's debut feature. It's a place that looks like the end of the line for any wayward traveler—at first because its atmosphere seems enticing for the morbidly curious and ultimately because the odds of survival in this place seem slim. The bright and colorful lights of the signs for various establishments do a good enough job covering up the decay of this city from a distance. Up close, though, the rot is obvious. That rot appears to lure those whose own lives are a tangle of vice-laden impulses, and it also seems to infect anyone who spends enough time in the place to see what those rotten people are capable of doing.

All of this is really to say that Stein and his team of production artists have gone to great lengths to create a locale that exudes as twisted a personality as the movie's cast of characters. The place is striking enough that we want to explore its every dirty nook and moldy cranny. For the most part, Stein allows us that indulgence, taking us to the city's assorted hotspots—from the train station and a nearby diner where most of the story unfolds, to a stories-tall strip club where most of the populace appears to congregate, and to the underground service areas that inform us that this was once a functioning a metropolis, not just the scene for a series of warped postcards.

Spending this much time in describing the details and the appeal of the location, though, should suggest that the movie possesses more than a few shortcomings. Most of them could be summed up with a sense of ultimate hollowness to these characters, the story, and, because there's nothing supporting it, the design of the city itself.

The story involves five characters who are in the city for reasons that mostly pertain to death. Annie (Margot Robbie) is an assassin who's looking to become the premier within her line of work. That means getting in good with the enigmatic Mr. Franklin, a local crime lord who only provides his voice and a series of puzzles to his hired guns. Annie establishes a deal with Mr. Franklin: If she can eliminate all of her competition in the city, he'll only use her for future jobs.

The primary targets are two hitmen named Alfred (Max Irons) and Vince (Dexter Fletcher). Annie, playing the roles of a waitress as the train terminal diner and a dancer at the local strip club, serves as their liaison for a fake job for Mr. Franklin. Meanwhile, Bill (Simon Pegg), a former English teacher with a terminal illness, has arrived in the city with thoughts of suicide. He and Annie, as the waitress, strike up a lengthy conversation about his fate. Finally, there's the train station's janitor (played by Mike Myers), who is corrupt in his own low-stationed way and keeps turning up within the stories of the other characters.

The plot features a series of double-crosses, an assortment of puzzles (involving briefcases and phone calls from Mr. Franklin), and plenty of secrets to be revealed. When it's not establishing these inevitable betrayals and revelations, doling out in pieces how these characters are more than superficially connected, Stein's screenplay mostly focuses on the generically hardened and occasionally clever ways in which these characters talk to each other. There's an extended hypothetical discussion of how Bill could end his life, with the possibilities playing out before him through the diner's windows. Vince is the tough guy of the assassin duo, offering insults and threats, while Alfred is almost a hopeless romantic when it comes to the fetching Annie. Annie has a demented sense of humor that's only the surface of how twisted she actually is.

The performances are fine enough in matching the heightened style of the material. Robbie really sinks her teeth into the role of a femme fatale of the ultimate sort—untrustworthy, playing all sides against each other, and doing it all with a cheery attitude and a flashy smile.

Everything about the movie, though, remains at that surface level of heightened style. Its digging is only into the connections between these broadly detailed characters (with Stein offering one, predictable twist after twist after another during the movie's climax), as well as a general sense of corruption and violence repeating itself. The city of Terminal may provide a stark and moody playground for its bad people to do increasingly bad things, but by the end, it feels as stylishly hollow as the movie's characters and story.

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