Instead, it aspires to be some sort of slow burn, sophisticated character study of a man dealing with loss and mortality. Put simply, The Terminal List isn’t satisfied being a thrilling, doesn’t-take-itself-too-seriously action saga (think Amazon’s own Jack Ryan). Beyond the satisfaction of seeing the “you messed with the wrong guy” revenge plot, there’s little else going for the show to warrant its laborious run time. Instead, the series’ formulaic narrative demanded a far slicker, more urgent pacing. Were we supposed to believe that a Chris Pratt-led action vehicle would involve him playing a severely mentally ill war vet that murders his own wife and kids? Similarly, even the show’s final “shock” of who was in on the coverup is a twist you can see coming from 6 episodes ago.
#Cast of the terminal series
The poorly-paced series takes too long (two whole hours) to get to the point we knew from the very start - that he is being framed. For the majority of the first two episodes, for example, we see Reece continually made to doubt himself and his own memories, as he’s made to wonder if he did, in fact, kill his family. The appeal of this genre lies not in the intrigue of what’s going to happen but in the thrill of getting revenge and taking down one corrupt official after another as our hero works his way up the bad guy ladder.īut much of The Terminal List insists a treating us like fools, throwing a frustrating series of mysteries and question marks at us, the answers to which are glaringly obvious.
#Cast of the terminal movie
(The Denzel Washington-led The Equalizer, for example, is a grand testament to the fact that an action movie need not be particularly original to be incredibly satisfying). I’m all for the well-crafted, revenge-fuelled-action-romp comfort watch. We know, for the most part, what happens and how it goes down with little margin for anything particularly inventive or different. We’ve seen variations of this story time and again. Here with the help of intrepid journalist Katie Buranek (a well-cast Constance Wu).Īt its best, The Terminal list (from co-writer and showrunner David DiGilio) is a watchable, competent action drama, but one which gets lost in a gruelling 8-episode runtime it doesn't earn, as it struggles to engage under the weight of its predictability. What follows is an all too familiar story (Shooter, Without Remorse, The Punisher, Man On Fire, and I could go on) of the trained killer with a specific set of skills out to get answers and uncover a wider conspiracy, leaving a bloody trail of bodies behind. But, of course, it’s not all in his head, as he finds out when his family is killed (the only purpose that the wife and kids of angry ex-marines seem to have in violent revenge movies) and Reece is framed for their murder.
(Also read: Chris Pratt says there was ‘no hesitation at all’ in returning to small screen )Īll this while he’s suffering from a mysterious, crippling psychological condition that’s causing his memories to muddle together, while his higher-ups convince him his theories of foul play are all in his head. After he returns home, Reece starts to put the pieces together of what went wrong and becomes convinced it was a setup. After what should’ve been a simple op behind enemy lines goes horribly wrong, Reece’s entire platoon of 12 fellow Seals are killed in an ambush (as we see in an impressively executed opening tunnel gunfight: the benefits of having Antoine Fuqua direct your pilot). Except here, it’s in the form of an 8 episode series on Amazon Prime Video.Ĭhris Pratt (who continues to insist that he’s got the charisma and dramatic chops to be a serious-actor-leading-man) stars as Navy Seal Commander James Reece. As the days stretch on into months, the terminal transforms from an intimidating atmosphere of forced assimilation into a country within itself, complete with culture, ambition, status, complex diversity, and the need for love.The Terminal List is a movie we’ve seen dozens of times before. Though airport official Frank Dixon (Stanley Tucci) views Viktor as an annoying bureaucratic glitch, other airport employees - including a beautiful flight attendant by the name of Amelia (Catherine Zeta-Jones) - come to see him as a welcome, if unofficial, addition to their numbers. Unauthorized to leave Kennedy Airport upon his arrival and unable to return home, Viktor finds himself exiled inside the terminal's international transit lounge.
Unfortunately, Viktor finds himself on the wrong end of a nasty technicality while en route to America: His passport was issued from a country, which, during its upheaval, ceased to exist in an official capacity.
This romantic comedy from director Steven Spielberg revolves around an Eastern European man by the name of Viktor Navorski (Tom Hanks), whose plans of immigrating to New York were hastened by a violent coup in his home country.
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