A wonderful movie! Tom Hanks deserved an Oscar for this performance. He plays the part of an Eastern Eupopean man named Victor Navorski from the fictional country of Krakoshia. While in flight to NYC his country is taken over by rebels in coup and his visa into the United States is taken away leaving him stranded in JFK airport's international terminal without a place to fly home to nor authorization to visit the U.S. The head security is a punctilious pecker of a bureacrat who leaves him- unable to speak english- to waste for months on end in the terminal, with no money, no food and no place to stay. His true hope is that he can get Victor to leave onto US soil so some other agency will arrest him. Victor however doesn't leave and decides to wait even when given opportunities to fudge the truth and gain passage into the United States. In the mean time, Victor lives on condiments and crackers... washes in the sinks and finds a home in a portion of the terminal that is being repaired. Within days however he figures out unique ways to survive- like returning the carts that people use for shopping to receive the quarter deposit. (which he quickly exchanges for cheeseburgers at the BK). The head of security- the Peckerhead- starts to become iritated with Victor's ingenuity. He hires someone to return the carts, taking away Victor's money. But he's unphased, and ends up getting meals from the food cart guy for gaining information about a love interest the guy has. Over the months he learns how to speak english, gets involved with a emotionally confused flight attendant (played by Catherine Zeta Jones) who's dating a married man and gets a job with a construction crew working on the terminal. He becomes a local hero to the terminal workers when he calms a man down who's having his dad's heart medication confiscated by the Peckerhead bureaucrat,-and through recollection of the rules on the forms he had been reading to learn english- lies for the man and says they are for his "goat" which would make them legal to carry. Throughout the story you are warmed by his goodness and perplexed by what it is in the Planter's peanuts can he had been carrying- he say's it's "jazz" in the can. In the end it is revealed he was only visiting New York to fulfill a promise he made to his dead father who had gotten the autographs of every famous jazz musician in a picture he had, except one. Victor flew to America, went through all these troubles to simply put the last signature in the can for his father- to keep his promise. This movie says so much about the human spirit, about the ingenuity of the immigrants who come here and take nothing for granted and about doing what is right- and keeping your word. I highly recommend this movie to everyone and anyone.