Best bad thing you’ll see all week: Terminal

If a movie can’t be good, at least it should be pretty. And if it can’t be pretty, at least it should be memorably gaudy. That’s where Terminal lives. This trite flash of neon noir plays like a community theater version of Sin City. The dialogue is the sort of oh-so-self-aware wordplay that an actual playwright might have written when he was still learning to write plays. The story is a mostly conventional femme fatale fable with precisely the unexpected twist you expect; the only reason you didn’t see it coming was because it’s all just made up at the end. Surprise! Every enthusiastically lit set looks like a first pass at concept art, drawn by someone whose only exposure to film noir is The Matrix. Shadows and fog not included.

But the appeal of Terminal is that its cast of accomplished actors is dedicated enough not necessarily to pull it off, but to at least give it a real go. Simon Pegg with the beard and brow of a Tsarist Russian intellectual; Max Irons as the slow witted and square jawed patsy; Dexter Fletcher and his unabashed mutton chops playing a vicious East End thug. Mike Meyers dons fake teeth and meanders through a couple of cameos. But above all else, Terminal offers Margot Robbie gamely reprising her Harley Quinn character, mad as a hatter and happy to slather on the make-up and gruesome grin to prove it. She’s nothing if not committed, and despite the dopey dialogue, cheap sets, and comic book visuals, she’s fascinating to watch. If Robbie can find her own Tim Burton, she’s guaranteed a career of caricatures as riveting as Johnny Depp’s. I, Tonya for the serious recognition with an occasional Terminal to show she’s still happy to come out and play.