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Australian actress Margot Robbie isn’t afraid to show a little grit. She played tough girl Harley Quinn in DC’s Suicide Squad, and she earned an Oscar nomination for her role as controversial figure skater Tonya Harding in I, Tonya. Now she brings the same grit—and plenty of layers—to her role in the twisted thriller Terminal.
Terminal follows the stories of a number of people who all end up stopping by an all-night café at a dreary train station in a dark and dingy city. Vincent and Alfred (Dexter Fletcher and Max Irons) are a couple of guns for hire who are waiting to get the orders for their next job. Bill (Simon Pegg) is a terminally ill English teacher who’s struggling with his own mortality. And they all find themselves in the care of a talkative waitress named Annie (Robbie), who has a dark secret.
Terminal is a shadowy and stylized adventure that’s a little bit Alice in Wonderland and a little bit Sin City. It’s twisting—and twisted—and it’s more than just a little bit mad.
It’s all visually striking, too, with a setting that’s ominous and seedy, lit by the colorful glow of neon lights. It’s a city that never seems to see the light of day. And it gives the film a tone that feels like something out of a pulpy detective novel.
The characters here are all strangely fascinating: the bickering hitmen waiting for a mysterious mission, the proper professor with nothing more to live for, the rambling night supervisor (played by Mike Myers) who may know more than he lets on, and the pretty waitress who seems to show up everywhere. Though you may not know how they’re connected—or where the story is going—the characters will easily hold your attention. And Robbie holds it all together with her ever-shifting Annie, who can be sweet or edgy or sinister as the moment requires.
Still, it’s all just a little too disjointed, the stories random yet predictable. You’ll spend much of the film trying to determine the point of it all—and while it does have some surprises along the way, the pieces don’t all fit together. It’s definitely an intriguing film, but it isn’t necessarily a satisfying one.
Thanks to its gritty tone, its charismatic characters, and its stunning star, Terminal is dark and shadowy and quite mesmerizing, too. Its storytelling is certainly flawed, but what it lacks in its script, it makes up in style.
Listen to the review on Reel Discovery:
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