Noircissism
Just as Gotham City and Metropolis are separated by a puny river in the latest incarnation of DC’s movie universe, I’d imagine there being less than a millimeter’s distance on a map between Frank Miller’s Sin City and The Precinct, the equally hard-boiled urban setting of writer/director Vaughn Stein’s Terminal. Both towns are ridiculously small, thematically colorful, and populated exclusively by lascivious, alcoholic bruisers and femmes fatale whose overlapping adventures reveal corrupt institutions held precariously intact by shadowy voyeurs. But in terms of mystery (a selling point of any good noir), these films are worlds apart.
Terminal’s (ahem) terminal narrative flatness can be traced back to Roger Ebert’s Law of Economy of Characters, which posits that “all characters in a movie are necessary to the story—even those who do not seem to be. Sophisticated viewers can use this Law to deduce the identity of a person being kept secret by the movie's plot: This 'mystery' person is always the only character in the movie who seems otherwise extraneous." In a movie like Terminal, whose main cast is only five roles deep, well, let’s just say the character economy isn’t exactly bustling—which is a problem when the eighth-of-the-run-time climax hinges on a revelation that one might deduce from watching the first five minutes (or glancing at the movie poster).
Margot Robbie plays Annie, a sometimes-waitress/sometimes-exotic dancer/sometimes-something-or-other, who wants nothing more than to ascend the Precinct’s underworld, which appears to be based around a perpetually empty train station overseen by the elusive Mr. Franklin (see poster for details). Annie lays out her plan to a priest during confession: she’ll turn the city’s top assassins (Max Irons and Dexter Fletcher) against each other, simultaneously proving her worth and filling a vacuum. Coinciding with the “A” Plot is a side story in which Annie counsels a despondent diner patron named Bill (Simon Pegg), who, following a cancer diagnosis, can muster neither the courage to live nor to die.
Taken on their own, and in Stein’s capably stylish hands, these ideas could have made for fun (if familiar) twenty-minute vignettes in a Netflix anthology series. Unfortunately, there’s an hour-plus of filler stuffed in between the fleeting bursts of momentum, resulting in a pace-challenged collection of dramatic set pieces disguised as a movie. It’s gaudy filler, too, marked by Lit 101 allusions to Alice in Wonderland and Film 102 references to Pulp Fiction—complete with a suitcase Maguffin and contentious banter between two colorful hitmen, one of whom is named Vincent.
It’s fun to watch Robbie and Pegg stretch as performers: the former exploring a more nuanced brand of crazy than she exhibited in Suicide Squad; the latter refining his unique blend of empathy and black humor, which pays off in ways so unexpected as to require a Usual Suspects-style re-watch.
Then there’s Mike Myers. I don’t envy the actor’s high-wire balancing act, which requires creating a creepy, pathetic new character that does not also bring to mind the comically pathetic characters in his repertoire. He falls off the rope early on. Worse yet, a late-stage costume change conjures specific memories of an iconic Myers identity, inspiring titters rather than the tingles I assume Stein had hoped for. At this moment, the film officially shrinks from city to subdivision, channeling soap-opera surprises and the end of Sucker Punch (ham minus Hamm, as it were).
I can recommend Terminal as a good time, visually. Stein’s feature-film debut commanded my attention and respect, particularly in the handling of sets and shots that feel at once crayon-playful and tetanus-filthy. His take on the “rabbit hole”--a bottomless, glowing chasm that cuts to the Precinct’s perverse heart--is the one Alice reference that lands without a sickening thud, and I will definitely be on board for whatever story calls to him next. I just hope it’s a destination instead of a tourist trap at the end of an unkempt, unremarkable highway.