Why is a unique neo-noir with Oscar nominee Margot Robbie, blockbuster star Simon Pegg, and Mike Myers' first film role in years being dumped on VOD?
This was one of the many questions that popped into my mind when I first read about Terminal, the directorial debut of former assistant director Vaughn Stein. Now, going straight to VOD is rarely indicative of quality these days, but how could a stylish film with such marquee stars not even nab a major distributor? It all seemed so strange, but the stars and neon-drenched madness ensured that I would check it out for myself. The results are decidedly mixed, and it's not entirely surprising that Terminal seems destined to go unnoticed by mainstream audiences. This is a deeply weird movie, and it's weird in a way that doesn't really make sense. While the whole plot clicks into place at the 11th hour, much of this Alice in Wonderland-meets-gangsters adventure feels showy and absurd in a cringe-inducing way. At its worst, it's the kind of thing I would have written in my high school playwriting class when I was trying to imitate the snappy, pseudo-intellectual dialogue of Quentin Tarantino.
Summarizing the plot of Terminal feels slightly futile, as the connective tissue between the film's disparate stories is something of a spoiler. Essentially, the film explores a group of vaguely connected characters as they go about their merry criminal way in a dark and grimy city. The setting is, you guessed it, a train terminal, where plenty of unholy and nasty things happen. Tying it all together is Annie (Robbie), a mysterious and beautiful blonde who seems like she was ripped out of a 1940s film noir. Annie wants the contracts of the enigmatic Mr. Franklyn, who informs her that she'll have to take out the competition in order to succeed. Along the way, the often-disguised Annie will meet Bill (Pegg), a dying English teacher with a mysterious ailment, as well as two bumbling hitmen (Dexter Fletcher and Max Irons) and a peculiar night supervisor (Myers). As the mystery slowly unfolds, Terminal becomes something of a revenge drama, a strange twist that you likely won't see coming.
If you're going to get any enjoyment out of this film, you first have to accept that it's basically a live-action cartoon. You won't find any characters that feel real or sympathetic, nor does the story seem to even be rooted in any kind of recognizable reality. The Wonderland connections seemingly have no thematic or narrative purpose, but it sort of excuses the silliness of the project. This gives the actors a chance to ham it up to a frankly absurd degree. Margot Robbie is in full-on camp mode here, relishing in her over-dramatic accent and delivering Stein's corny lines with as much forceful gusto as humanly possible. After breaking out alongside Leonardo DiCaprio in The Wolf of Wall Street and generating empathy for Tonya Harding in the Oscar-nominated biopic, Robbie's performance in Terminal feels like her rendition of Harley Quinn taken to a new extreme. If you've ever wondered if one of Robbie's performances could go really, truly wrong, her wickedly weird turn here answers that question.
Robbie's Annie barely feels like a human being, which is why it's so peculiar when Stein tries to make the audience care about her in the final act. That being said, she's far from the only one virtually playing a caricature in this film. Mike Myers, returning to the big screen in a live-action role for the first time since his cameo in Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds, continues his love of make-up and exaggerated voices, though all the histrionics have a bit more of a narrative purpose this time around. It's good to see Myers back in prime form (fingers crossed for Austin Powers 4), but the surprises in store for his character are both predictable and disappointing. Then there's Simon Pegg, playing a sad sack who feels like he was ripped out of another movie entirely. Pegg's Bill is strangely likable and amusing, which is why it's so odd when Stein turns away from that altogether. Dexter Fletcher and Max Irons are fairly pointless in the grand scheme of things, and it's thoroughly bizarre to see Harry Potter star Matthew Lewis in what may be the most thankless cameo of all time.
Terminal's quippy dialogue is probably its biggest selling point, and it may just be its downfall as well. As characters waxed poetic about grammatical errors and the enduring appeal of death, traded verbal barbs laced with f-bombs, and avoided any narrative progression at all, I began to recognize precisely what Stein was doing. Because to be quite honest, it's exactly the kind of thing I tried to do when I experimented with screenwriting. Other critics have derided Terminal as a Tarantino knock-off, and I don't think that's exactly the case. Stein is at least trying to do something weirdly original here with this fantastical crime saga; whether it works is another matter altogether. But I recognized the kind of dialogue he was trying to create, that snappy, whip-smart roller-coaster of conversation that defines Tarantino's films. I tried many times in high school to replicate that, and I failed miserably every single time. Watching Terminal was often like watching one of my high school scripts fall flat on a grand scale, and I couldn't help but cringe as it became all too apparent what Stein was trying to accomplish.
The rapport between the characters is awkward enough, but Stein's filmmaking is often lacking as well. There are a few inspired moments- an amusingly meta scene in a cafe where Pegg and Robbie watch various death scenes play out from the comfort of their booth made me smile. But Terminal suffers from a case of too much direction, as the gaudy visuals and flashy movements make the whole affair feel downright exhausting. And then there's the editing style, which seems to be channeling Edgar Wright's quick-cut approach while lacking the precision and visual irony of his films. Even simple conversations in Terminal feature an endless series of cuts, a trend that quickly grows noticeable and tiresome.
After meandering around its Wonderland-inspired wasteland for two acts, unleashing faux pulp dialogue and bouncing from character to character, Terminal finally coheres into something meaningful in its final third. But the attempted gear shift from dreamlike neo-noir to feminist revenge parable doesn't quite hit the mark, as Stein still can't give us any reason to care about these characters or this story. Even with flashbacks to childhood trauma and a few slick twists, Terminal's alien atmosphere renders the emotional core totally inert. It's an intermittently cool little experiment in outlandish flash and neon pizzazz, but Terminal's tricks and turns don't add up to anything remotely involving or effective.
THE FINAL GRADE: C (5.8/10)
This was one of the many questions that popped into my mind when I first read about Terminal, the directorial debut of former assistant director Vaughn Stein. Now, going straight to VOD is rarely indicative of quality these days, but how could a stylish film with such marquee stars not even nab a major distributor? It all seemed so strange, but the stars and neon-drenched madness ensured that I would check it out for myself. The results are decidedly mixed, and it's not entirely surprising that Terminal seems destined to go unnoticed by mainstream audiences. This is a deeply weird movie, and it's weird in a way that doesn't really make sense. While the whole plot clicks into place at the 11th hour, much of this Alice in Wonderland-meets-gangsters adventure feels showy and absurd in a cringe-inducing way. At its worst, it's the kind of thing I would have written in my high school playwriting class when I was trying to imitate the snappy, pseudo-intellectual dialogue of Quentin Tarantino.
Summarizing the plot of Terminal feels slightly futile, as the connective tissue between the film's disparate stories is something of a spoiler. Essentially, the film explores a group of vaguely connected characters as they go about their merry criminal way in a dark and grimy city. The setting is, you guessed it, a train terminal, where plenty of unholy and nasty things happen. Tying it all together is Annie (Robbie), a mysterious and beautiful blonde who seems like she was ripped out of a 1940s film noir. Annie wants the contracts of the enigmatic Mr. Franklyn, who informs her that she'll have to take out the competition in order to succeed. Along the way, the often-disguised Annie will meet Bill (Pegg), a dying English teacher with a mysterious ailment, as well as two bumbling hitmen (Dexter Fletcher and Max Irons) and a peculiar night supervisor (Myers). As the mystery slowly unfolds, Terminal becomes something of a revenge drama, a strange twist that you likely won't see coming.
If you're going to get any enjoyment out of this film, you first have to accept that it's basically a live-action cartoon. You won't find any characters that feel real or sympathetic, nor does the story seem to even be rooted in any kind of recognizable reality. The Wonderland connections seemingly have no thematic or narrative purpose, but it sort of excuses the silliness of the project. This gives the actors a chance to ham it up to a frankly absurd degree. Margot Robbie is in full-on camp mode here, relishing in her over-dramatic accent and delivering Stein's corny lines with as much forceful gusto as humanly possible. After breaking out alongside Leonardo DiCaprio in The Wolf of Wall Street and generating empathy for Tonya Harding in the Oscar-nominated biopic, Robbie's performance in Terminal feels like her rendition of Harley Quinn taken to a new extreme. If you've ever wondered if one of Robbie's performances could go really, truly wrong, her wickedly weird turn here answers that question.
Robbie's Annie barely feels like a human being, which is why it's so peculiar when Stein tries to make the audience care about her in the final act. That being said, she's far from the only one virtually playing a caricature in this film. Mike Myers, returning to the big screen in a live-action role for the first time since his cameo in Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds, continues his love of make-up and exaggerated voices, though all the histrionics have a bit more of a narrative purpose this time around. It's good to see Myers back in prime form (fingers crossed for Austin Powers 4), but the surprises in store for his character are both predictable and disappointing. Then there's Simon Pegg, playing a sad sack who feels like he was ripped out of another movie entirely. Pegg's Bill is strangely likable and amusing, which is why it's so odd when Stein turns away from that altogether. Dexter Fletcher and Max Irons are fairly pointless in the grand scheme of things, and it's thoroughly bizarre to see Harry Potter star Matthew Lewis in what may be the most thankless cameo of all time.
Terminal's quippy dialogue is probably its biggest selling point, and it may just be its downfall as well. As characters waxed poetic about grammatical errors and the enduring appeal of death, traded verbal barbs laced with f-bombs, and avoided any narrative progression at all, I began to recognize precisely what Stein was doing. Because to be quite honest, it's exactly the kind of thing I tried to do when I experimented with screenwriting. Other critics have derided Terminal as a Tarantino knock-off, and I don't think that's exactly the case. Stein is at least trying to do something weirdly original here with this fantastical crime saga; whether it works is another matter altogether. But I recognized the kind of dialogue he was trying to create, that snappy, whip-smart roller-coaster of conversation that defines Tarantino's films. I tried many times in high school to replicate that, and I failed miserably every single time. Watching Terminal was often like watching one of my high school scripts fall flat on a grand scale, and I couldn't help but cringe as it became all too apparent what Stein was trying to accomplish.
The rapport between the characters is awkward enough, but Stein's filmmaking is often lacking as well. There are a few inspired moments- an amusingly meta scene in a cafe where Pegg and Robbie watch various death scenes play out from the comfort of their booth made me smile. But Terminal suffers from a case of too much direction, as the gaudy visuals and flashy movements make the whole affair feel downright exhausting. And then there's the editing style, which seems to be channeling Edgar Wright's quick-cut approach while lacking the precision and visual irony of his films. Even simple conversations in Terminal feature an endless series of cuts, a trend that quickly grows noticeable and tiresome.
After meandering around its Wonderland-inspired wasteland for two acts, unleashing faux pulp dialogue and bouncing from character to character, Terminal finally coheres into something meaningful in its final third. But the attempted gear shift from dreamlike neo-noir to feminist revenge parable doesn't quite hit the mark, as Stein still can't give us any reason to care about these characters or this story. Even with flashbacks to childhood trauma and a few slick twists, Terminal's alien atmosphere renders the emotional core totally inert. It's an intermittently cool little experiment in outlandish flash and neon pizzazz, but Terminal's tricks and turns don't add up to anything remotely involving or effective.
THE FINAL GRADE: C (5.8/10)
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