Terminal (2018) Brit Neon Noir from the Twilight Zone.

"A Surveillance                                 of Assailants"

Written and Directed by Vaughn Stein. Cinematography by Christopher Ross. Music by Tony Clarke, and Rupert Gregson-Williams. For this film we are going to also praise the  Production Design by Richard Bullock, the Art Direction by Adrien Asztalos and the Set Decoration by Zoltán Frank.

The film stars Margot Robbie (I, Tonya)  as Annie / Bonnie, Simon Pegg (Shaun of the Dead) as Bill, Dexter Fletcher (The Long Good Friday, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Layer Cake, ) as Vince, Max Irons (Condor TV Series 2018–2020) as Alfred, Nick Moran as Illing, and Mike Myers (Austin Powers series, Inglourious Basterds) as Janitor / Night Superintendent / Supe / Clinton Sharp / Mr. Franklyn. 

With Katarina Čas as Chloe Merryweather, Jourdan Dunn as Conejo, Matthew Lewis as Lenny, Thomas Turgoose as Raymond, Jay Simpson as Danny, Ben Griffin as Toby, Robert Goodman as Priest, and Paul Reynolds as the Doctor.

 

Margot Robbie as "Bottle Blonde" Annie

Dexter Fletcher as Vince

Mike Meyers as Janitor

Simon Pegg as Bill

Max Irons as Alfred

This is one way to make a Noir with a low budget and Hungarian locations. Its set in what I like to call a Nightmare Noirsville which is a sort of ersatz Twilight Zone-ish Noir universe set anywhere, and just like Twilight Zone its a place of dreams, imagination, and nightmares. This one falls more on the Nightmare side.

To paraphrase Rod Serling if I might,  'You're pulling into the Terminal of another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind. A middle ground between light and shadow, that can be as claustrophobic as a closet, or as vast as space, and as timeless as infinity." The train Terminal is vaguely located in an urban geo-political entity called Precinct.

Terminal is sort of a mélange of Alice in Wonderland / Through the Looking Glass, 1984, Sin City, a dash of Vertigo, a dash of Giallo and Dr. Strangelove, Alphaville  and of course the Twilight Zone. 

High heels, legs, walking down a green carpet with various shots of the warrens and bowels of the Terminal and its environs.

Annie: [V.O. narration] There is a place like no other on Earth. A land full of wonder, mystery, and danger. Some say to survive it you need to be as mad as a hatter, which luckily... I am.

A panel slides open. Bonnie in a Bettie Page wig wearing bright red lipstick, is revealed behind a screen. Its a confessional. Bonnie begins to speak. 

Bonnie: [Slides open the penitent's grill] Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.

A flash of an out of focus woman in a red dress entering a room with a man. (her sin?)

Mans voice: Easy, sweetheart.

Bonnie: [lights up]

Mans Voice: I don't think you're supposed to smoke in here.

Bonnie: Guess I've sinned again then.

Bonnie wants to take over all the contract killings. 

The disembodied voice tells her that he has other interested parties in place that handle all his liquidations. She makes him a wager. She tells the man that she'll have them turning on each other like starving rats in a cage. Give her a fortnight and she'll have them dead at his feet. 

Bonnie slides the penitent's panel shut, but then slides it back open asking for one more thing. She wants to find somebody. Cut to...

The opening credits are reminiscent of the opening of Twilight Zone's "The Four of Us Are Dying" episode, A jumble of neon (below)

Opening sequence of "The Four of us Are Dying"

The same overlay of neon style was also used in a few Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer to give an impression of Times Square. Back to the film.

Big Brother is watching.

Cut to a control room with surveillance cameras. An overhead camera catches a blonde woman in a long blood red coat carrying a brown paper bag. 

She is walking across cobblestones, tile gutters, and sidewalk of a small piazza. Cut to the interior of the Railway Hotel. The woman in red climbs a stairway. Along a hall the woman knocks on a door and places the bag on the floor. We see a newspaper sticking out of the top of the bag, its a food delivery.

The door opens and Vince, a scruffy, diminutive, bantam rooster, version of a hit man pears out with a gun in his hand. He bends down cautiously and pokes the revolver into the top of the bad surveying its contents. 

Vince

Satisfied, he simultaneously peers down the hall, holsters the revolver on his hip, and reaches down to bring the bag into the room.

Shaving at a bureau is his partner Alfred. Alfred grouses about the same ol same ol contents of the bag and Vince slaps the newspaper across the back of his head to shut him up. 

Alfred

Vince asks him why is he shaving now, mentioning that they've been holed up there two weeks. Alfred tells him he's got a date later. Vince, looking over the top of the Precinct newspaper replies that the only date he has is with his hand, later, and calls him a wanker.

Cut to the deserted Terminal platform. 

A man Bill, is waiting for a train. The stations janitor wheels into view with a trash collector, He's moving along the platform emptying wastebaskets. 

Bill

He stops and tells Bill that there won't be any trains till 4:04. Bill asks if there are any freight trains that come along. He just needs a train going North.  

The janitor replies, no freight trains here. The janitor does tell Bill that the End of the Line Cafe is open 24 hours up on the concourse.

Up on the concourse level Bill is accosted by two would be muggers. The first guy pulls a knife, the second a gun. Bill surprises them by telling the muggers that they are unprepared. 

I'll give you a five for the gun.

Then he offers the guy holding the gun a five pound note telling him that he needs a gun. Then he asks him if it has bullets. When he replies no, Bill looks disgustedly at him and tells them that he's really disappointed in the two of them and walks away. Its a very humorous sequence. 

Why did you tell him you had no bullets?

End of the Line Cafe

Annie

Annie

Annie. A cute slightly disheveled blonde waitress with attitude. 

In the Cafe, Bill has taken a booth and a cup of coffee and has been fidgeting for the last fifteen minutes. Annie is intently watching her only customer from behind the counter. Bill takes out a cigarette case and lights up.

Annie: You can't smoke in here.

Bill: Well, there's no one else in here.

Annie: They're not smoking either, are they?

Bill: Can I have another cup of coffee then, this one's cold. 

Annie: That's because you've been playing with it for twenty minutes.

Bill: Can I have another one?

Annie: Sure 40 pence. 

Bill: Have a heart I just got mugged

Annie: 39 then, I'm in a giving mood.

Bill: So shines a good deal in a naughty world.

The word "naughty" sets Annie off.

Annie: Naughty? As in spank me gently I've been a naughty girl?

Bill: No, not that kind of naughty.

Annie: As in tie me to the bedposts because I've been so naughty?

Bill: I think that qualifies as the same kind of naughty.

Annie: I know, I enjoy watching you fidget when I say naughty.

You see a sputtering of a spark of recognition. 

Bill: Have we met before?

Annie: Why? Do I look familiar?

Bill starts coughing. Annie concerned asks if she can help, does he have medicine? Bill nods while coughing and holds up the pack of smokes. Annie tells him he's got to be kidding, then tells him to go ahead. 

Oh go ahead...

Cut to Vince and Alfred in the hotel room. Vince is reading the personals out of the Precinct.

Vince: Listen to this. Curvaceous cream skinned belle seeks sleek Romeo for candlelit romance. and walks in the moonlight, city based. See that's code, that is. That's deviants code. Pervert poetry. Translates to: Fat bird needs outside seeing to late at night. See?

Alfred: Well that is funny.

Vince: Slight, retiring, young gentleman, seeks decisive practical lady to draw him from his shell. Friendship and romance. Suburban residence. Translation: Skinny pencil dick seeks domenatrix for abuse and humiliation. Has own dungeon. The world's gone to shit and all anybody can think about is their next dirty one down the docks.

We cut back to the End Of The Line Cafe

Annie struts with Bills cup of coffee down to his booth. She puts the cup on his table and plops down on the bench seat. 

Annie: So. What's wrong with you? You're hardly the picture of health. What's wrong?

Bill: You don't want to know.

Annie: I'm fascinated. Tell me. 

Bill: What's wrong with you?

Annie: I have an unquenchable bloodlust for darkness and depravity.

Bill: That's Nice

Annie: Is it cancer?

This all leads to another black humor flashback of Bill in his doctors office, followed by more banter between Annie and Bill.

Annie: Are you being survived?

Bill: I have no idea what that means.

Annie:  Wife, kids?

Bill: Okay, you can't say that. It's "survived by"? It has no other grammatical context.

Annie: Jesus, what are you, a dying English teacher?

Bill: Yes.

They trade more words across the table top and then Bill inquisitively asks...

Bill:  Are you sure we haven't met before?  

Annie: I don't know, have we? 

Bill reprimands her correcting her English, and she calls him  a pompous prat.

We now get a three weeks ago Flashback, introduced by a neon sign announcing it.

Bonnie back in the "confessional" makes a proposal to take over all of Mr. Franklyn's assassination contracts. Mr. Franklyn is the Big Cheese of the Precinct, the Number One. She proposes to do this by eliminating his current hitmen flunkies, aka Illing, Alfred, and Vince. 

We jump to her capture and assassination of Illing.

Illing is the first to go we get a sequence where we see him lured by Bonnie posing as a prostitute with the promise of sex to her apartment where he's drugged and wakes up will all his limbs handcuffed to the head and foot boards of a bed.

The last we see of Illing is with Bonnie straddling him with a scapple in her hand. One down two to go.

Cut to a more inclusive view of the green carpeted church where Bonnie goes to the  confession we got previewed at the opening of the film. Through the cross-hatched  speaking mesh we see Bonnie with an unlit cigarette.

Bonnie: [in confessional] Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.

Mans voice: Easy, sweetheart.

Bonnie: [lights up]

Mans Voice: I don't think you're supposed to smoke in here.

Bonnie: Guess I've sinned again then.

This is only the twenty minute point. So the film continues to go Noirsville as Annie aka "Bottle Blonde" Vince's nickname, begins to take us all down the twists and turns down the rabbit hole to the other side of the looking glass. 

Noirsville

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Vaughn Stein made an excellent Neon Neo Noir. The whole cast is spot on. The cinematography by Ross depicts a hazy urban dreamland Noir.  The visuals phototropic-ly stimulate the story. You may have to put on some captioning if you are not used to UK English accents and slang though, but its worth it, because the hardboiled banter is great. Some of the exchanges between Vince (Dexter Fletcher) and Alfred (Max Irons) and between Annie (Margot Robbie) and Bill (Simon Pegg) are quite chuckle inducing. 

It has small homages, a great soundtrack, and is thoroughly entertaining. If you love Twisted Noir it has what we are looking for  8/10