Terminal: Film Review

I will pretty much watch everything featuring Margot Robbie and she was in a run of films that I loved, from I, Tonya to Goodbye Christopher Robin, but that sadly comes to an end with Terminal, which is the perfect example of style over substance.

Robbie plays Annie, a mysterious waitress who works at a dingy cafe in a disused train terminal. One night, Bill (Simon Pegg), a teacher battling a fatal illness, enters and they strike up a conversation about death and the pros and cons of suicide. In another thread, Vince (Dexter Fletcher) and Alfred (Max Irons) are two assassins waiting for a call for their next job, and Mike Myers is Clinton, a kooky janitor of the terminal. They are all somehow connected to criminal mastermind Mr. Franklyn, but how, and who is he?!

I was really attracted to Terminal visually, it has an aesthetic I really like, with every set being artfully dressed, interestingly lit and looking incredible, from the abandoned terminal to the nighttime city landscape that was dark and dingy, with the exception of the many neon signs. Annie is a master of disguise and she looks gorgeous in all her radically different get-ups. Massive props to the hair, make-up and costume teams.

Terminal may look stunning, but that’s it really. The story is confusing and messy and there is no depth to it – it’s all on the surface. You don’t know who the characters are, you are almost watching them from a distance, so you can’t get invested in them or the story. You know the plots will eventually tie up but it takes a while before you learn how, by which point you don’t care anymore. A lot of the twists I saw coming, particularly the Mr Franklyn one, but the end twist was unexpected, weird, bloody and intriguing, but not all that satisfactory.

Robbie comes away from it fine though because she does a great job as Annie; she looks incredible and captivates with her excellent outfits and bonkers British accent. She is obsessed with death and obviously batshit crazy, so it is easy to compare the part to Harley Quinn from Suicide Squad. It was nice to see Myers on my screen after such a long absence and he was hamming it up as the weirdo, who just does odd bits here and there. The other support cast was simply fine.

Terminal has the visuals and the intriguing characters, a solid basis for a noir thriller, but it just didn’t know what to do with the separate strands and how to bring them together, meaning the narrative doesn’t quite work or reach a satisfying conclusion.

In cinemas from Friday 6th July