TERMINAL
DIRECTOR Vaughn Stein
CAST Margot Robbie, Simon Pegg, Mike Myers, Dexter Fletcher
PLOT Two killers (Fletcher, Irons), a teacher (Pegg) and a janitor (Myers) lurk on the streets of an ever-dark city, living in fear of crime lord Mr Franklin, but a greater threat might be posed by a mysterious waitress (Robbie) with a curious interest in their lives. HARDBOILED NOIR PASTICHE Terminal is largely set in and around a train station. Which is apt, given that it pretty much nails the feeling of what it’s like to spend 90 minutes in one. There are long stretches of listlessness, every now and again something interesting to look at, and the overall compulsion to keep checking your watch. While its strong cast and enthusiastic production design save it from being a complete washout, Vaughn Stein’s debut as writerdirector is no Sin City. It’s not even a Lucky Number Slevin.
In Precinct, a dystopian urban sprawl with largely empty streets, a handful of characters encounter Annie, a willowy femme fatale played by Margot Robbie. It’s not hard to see why Robbie signed up to play the part: Annie has secrets, multiple personas and a mysterious agenda, and gets to utter some eyebrow-raising innuendo involving sticky buns. On paper, it’s a dame role to kill for. Unfortunately, the character’s allure is significantly diminished by the fact she’s insufferably chatty, monologuing every time she gets a chance yet delivering almost nothing in the way of memorable lines.
The other players in the tale don’t fare too much better. Simon Pegg, as an English professor with an incurable disease, hangs around in a diner for most of the runtime, discussing the ins and outs of mortality. Mike Myers, wearing latex as a snaggle-toothed, glinty-eyed dogsbody who is reminscent of Fat Bastard were he to lose a lot of weight ( just Bastard, then?), shuffles around quoting Much Ado About Nothing. And Dexter Fletcher and Max Irons, as a pair of constantly bickering hitmen, do a lot of sub-guy Ritchie tough-guy chat, including a digression about the accuracy of violence in movies, to tiresome effect. The pace is glacial, and the twists, when they inevitably come, are either eminently guessable or so ridiculous they belong in a soap opera starring Dr Drake Ramoray.
While the narrative leaves a lot to be desired, fortunately the visuals are better. There is enough neon here to light up a dozen Times Squares — even the opening credits are presented as eye-meltingly bright billboards. And while there’s only a handful of locations, indicative of the film’s limited budget, they’re each designed within an inch of their lives, from all-night diner The End Of The Line to a power station that boasts a (metaphor alert) gaping chasm in the ground. It’s a world in which you can imagine a thrilling story playing out. Sadly, it’s not this one.
VERDICT Some outrageous, if hardly original, twists eventually enliven a dreary plot. But even with Margot Robbie in full scheming-vixen mode, Terminal feels interminable.