Those who thought the three-decade collaboration between director Steven Spielberg and composer John Williams couldn't possibly yield any more musical surprises will find themselves warmly rebuffed here. Based on the true story of an exiled man-without-a-country who made Paris' Orly airport his home, director Steven Spielberg's storytelling liberties have transformed it into an unlikely comic romance between Tom Hanks' mythical Krakhozian refugee Viktor and Catherine Zeta-Jones' Amelia. Williams' captures the wistful tone with an airy, oft-impressionistic score that recalls a winning marriage of Michel Legrand's elegant piano-jazz conceits and Rachel Portman's delicate, introspective pastoralism. Too often underutilized in recent years, Williams' own rich jazz background frequently serves him well here, informing Amelia's love theme with emotional grace and serving as perfect counterpoint to the ethnic inventions carried by Emily Bernstein's soulful clarinet (Williams even gets to concoct a lovably pompous anthem for Viktor's fictional Krakhozia) and the bracing jolts of bright, post-modernist influenced orchestral music that holds it together. -- Jerry McCulley
