Terminal is an interesting revenge story that mostly works. There are a few missteps, namely a few wasted characters and a straight forward plot made needlessly complicated. Still, Vaughn Stein should be pleased with what’s here.
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What are critics saying?
Compounding the manic energy of the editing is dialogue that muses mostly on long-winded ideas that don’t lend themselves to any kind of visual representation.
The Film Stage by Christopher Schobert
Terminal is destined to be forgotten. However, if the cast, the look, and the wacky storyline intrigue, it might be worth a viewing. While it’s far from the so-bad-its-good category, the few oddities contained within may delight a few curious audience members.
Consequence of Sound by Clint Worthington
Drawing from a host of late-nineties influences but doing nothing with them, Terminal is little more than a shallow exercise in dated crime movie pastiche.
Vaughn Stein’s Terminal takes a mess of dead tropes and Frankensteins them together into an crime saga that’s in desperate need of brains. And a soul. And a story.
Terminal's actors are awkward and stiff in trying to project hard-boiled cool, and all while delivering lines that sound as if they had been passed multiple times through an online translation tool.
The New York Times by Jeannette Catsoulis
Featuring more twists than a 1960s dance marathon, Terminal is a flashy, hyperstylized bore.
It’s beautiful, if not brilliant, and (aside from a final act that drags on way too long) fun to watch. In the alternate universe where I don’t care about misogyny and I decided to watch this movie on mute, it’s probably one of the best things I’ve seen all year.
Los Angeles Times by Noel Murray
Robbie is fascinating to watch, as always. But in this case she's providing 100-watt star power to a tacky little table lamp.
Veteran second unit director Vaughn Stein (“World War Z,” “Sherlock Holmes”) had access to talent and to people who could finance a film, and proves adept at managing a cohesive, distinct look and feel. But his inept story and fumbling efforts to connect the disparate threads of a tale no one cares about make his actors look bad.