The reviews for Margot Robbie‘s hyper-stylised new film Terminal are in, and they don’t exactly reflect the noir thriller’s neon glow.
Terminal follows the travails of a couple of assassins, a dying professor, a waitress, and one incredibly strange janitor. Those genre-appropriate characters are portrayed by a genuinely massive cast – along with Robbie, Terminal boasts appearances from Simon Pegg, Max Irons, and a rare big-screen appearance from Mike Myers.
But reviewers say that immense roster can’t save director Vaughn Stein‘s film from itself. For the New York Observer, Rex Reed says the film – which Robbie also co-produced – amounts to a “colossal career mistake” that is “frankly, unwatchable.”
Rolling Stone’s Peter Travers awarded Terminal zero stars. He lambasted the film for borrowing ideas from other greats of the genre without also taking their quality, saying it “plays like something Quentin Tarantino upchucked after watching Blade Runner while reading Alice in Wonderland and ingesting too many hallucinogens”.
David Edelstein of Variety critiqued the film’s jumpy take on the plot, calling it “a series of playlets stitched together with the seams hanging out.”
Amid all of that, Thrillist‘s Karen Han did single out Mike Myers’ performance as uniquely alluring. His solo scenes are “a refreshing reminder of just why he’s so fun to watch,” Han writes, but cedes that “it’s just a pity that the movie itself isn’t quite as thrilling.”
Terminal arrives on Australian screens on May 26.
