Film

Terminal

Name: Terminal
Genre: Crime, Drama, Thriller, Action, Comedy
Released: 2018
Cast: Margot Robbie, Simon Pegg, Dexter Fletcher, Max Irons, Mike Myers

Terminal is a stylish crime thriller where multiple strangers' lives collide in a seedy diner under the shadow of a mysterious criminal mastermind. Director Vaughn Haig wraps a revenge plot around neon-soaked visuals and genre pastiche, leaning equally on noir atmosphere and dark comedy. It's for viewers who want surface-level cool and don't mind if the logic underneath stays deliberately foggy.

TMDb rating

2.8

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you love stylised neo-noir where the pleasure is in mannered dialogue and a web of strangers whose paths keep crossing, and you don't mind the tone shifting between bleak and absurd.

Skip it if you want a lean thriller that moves briskly, since this one lingers on atmosphere and its tangled timeline can feel more ornate than gripping.

What it asks of you: Patience for a slow, mannered build and quiet, stylised scenes that only click together late, though at a brisk 95 minutes it never overstays.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

Drive2011

Sparse, hypnotic crime thriller built on mood and silence rather than exposition. Long stretches without dialogue, synthesiser score, and Ryan Gosling as a taciturn driver-for-hire create an intoxicating sense of dread and style.

But Plot is deliberately thin and the pacing glacial. If you need things explained or prefer action over atmosphere, this will feel like it's wasting your time.

In Bruges2008

Two hitmen hide out in a medieval Belgian city after a job goes wrong. Brutally funny, genuinely moving, and Colin Farrell's monologues about guilt are worth the price of admission alone. Genre-savvy without ever feeling clever.

But The tonal whiplash between comedy and tragedy won't work for everyone. Some viewers find the sentimentality cloying or the pacing uneven.

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang2005

A career criminal bumbles into Hollywood while getting tangled up in a murder case. Robert Downey Jr. is magnetic, the mystery is genuinely clever, and it skewers noir tropes while loving them. Endlessly quotable.

But The narration is relentless and self-congratulatory. If you're tired of films that wink at the camera and explain their own jokes, you'll find it exhausting.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Terminal

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Cigarette Burns2005

Both films use genre pastiche and dark atmosphere to explore obsession and moral compromise. They share a visual style rooted in 70s-80s thriller aesthetics and a love of style over narrative clarity.

A 47-minute thriller about a film collector hired to find a rare movie that drives viewers insane. It's stylish, genuinely eerie, and packed with cinema-lover easter eggs. John Carpenter directs with a light touch and an obsessive attention to mood.

But It's a TV movie—the runtime is short and the budget shows. The meta-film-criticism angle might feel overly niche if you're not steeped in horror cinema.

Layer Cake2004

A London cocaine dealer gets pulled into a web of betrayal and violence when a job goes sideways. Slick, tense, and Matthew Vaughn's direction is assured. Feels like proper crime fiction, not parody of it.

But Daniel Craig's character is largely reactive. The plot has more moving parts than it knows what to do with, and the ending underwhelms after all that setup.

Brick2006

High school noir where a teenager investigates his ex-girlfriend's death using hard-boiled detective logic and 1940s dialogue. Genuinely audacious conceptual conceit and Joseph Gordon-Levitt is excellent. Doesn't wink at its own premise.

But The affectation can curdle into pretension. Some viewers find the meta-genre approach annoying rather than clever, and the film takes itself far more seriously than it has earned.

Snatch2000

Interconnected crime stories involving stolen diamonds, Russian mobsters, and bare-knuckle boxing. Kinetic, funny, and the ensemble cast is stellar. Early Guy Ritchie before he lost the plot entirely.

But It's aggressively stylized to the point of chaos. Multiple overlapping storylines and rapid cuts might feel more exhausting than entertaining.

The Gentlemen2020

Chaotic London crime caper with Matthew McConaughey, Charlie Hunnam, and Hugh Grant chewing scenery as a gossipy private detective. Funny, kinetic, and bursting with personality. Pure entertainment without pretence.

But The plot is deliberately convoluted and Hugh Grant's comic relief will divide viewers sharply. If you prefer coherent storytelling to stylish chaos, this goes too far.

Faster2010

Dwayne Johnson plays an ex-con on a revenge spree against those who wronged him. Lean, brutal, and surprisingly meditative about rage and cycles of violence. The action sequences are crisp and the moral weight genuine.

But The script is thin and the character work sparse. If you're watching for nuance or dialogue, you'll be disappointed by how straightforward it all is.

Johnny Dangerously1984

A scrappy comedy with Joe Piscopo as a crime boss who's genuinely likeable. It's a broad parody of 1930s gangster films that somehow captures genuine affection for its source material despite constant ridicule.

But The humour is broad, dated, and inconsistent. Most jokes land with a thud and the film relies heavily on improv that frequently misfires.

Brick Mansions2014

Both feature stylized crime worlds that feel slightly unreal, populated with archetypes rather than characters. Both use visual flair to compensate for thinner-than-ideal storytelling, and both have Dexter Fletcher in the cast.

A sci-fi action thriller set in a dystopian Detroit where a cop and an ex-con team up to stop a bomb. It's energetic, visually inventive, and Paul Walker's final film has an earnest charm. The action is creative and the world-building economical.

But The script is thin and the performances are... broad. The film feels like a B-movie in the worst way—cheap-looking and creatively timid.

A Prophet2009

Both explore underworld hierarchies and the transformation of ordinary people through crime. A Prophet shows what happens when Terminal's aesthetic ambitions are paired with genuine psychological depth and moral seriousness. It's the film Terminal wants to be if it weren't afraid of its own premise.

A French-language crime drama about a young man's rise through the prison system. It's brutal, unflinching, and genuinely gripping. Jacques Audiard's direction is fluid and the moral complexity is earned, not performative. This is what genre ambition looks like.

But It's 150 minutes of prison violence and moral degradation. Subtitled, unglamorous, and utterly devoid of the stylistic comfort that Terminal offers. The pace is deliberate and demanding.