Movie Review: 'Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close' a youth's journey searching for his lost father
Submitted by admin on Sun, 01/22/2012 - 6:34pm
The new film "Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close" by director Stephen Daldry ("The Hours") playing at the Fandango Galaxy cineplex in Carson City a story about a 9-year old boy Oskar Schell (Thomas Horn) who loses his father in the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center. He suffers perhaps from Asperger's and a clear case of overwhelming anxiety. His mother Linda (Sandra Bullock in a downer role that doesn't really use her many skills) is bereft at the loss of her husband Thomas (Tom Hanks in a reprise of his many earlier roles as the nice guy who loses) and doesn't connect with her precocious son.
He paws through his late father's closet and finds and breaks a blue vase (in coaxingly slow motion) which dislodges an envelope with the word "black" written on it with a key inside. Oskar decides that the key is a special message to him for his father and "black" is the name of someone who can explain it all to him.
So being the highly intelligent boy that he is, he maps all the Blacks in New York City and starts calling on them. He has set up an elaborate system for doing so --- card indexes, maps, chips for locating Blacks.
He has been in contact via walkie-talkie with his grandmother in a nearby apartment and when he goes there he encounters an older man The Renter (Max von Sydow who as a mute says more than the rest of the cast except young Horn). He joins Oskar on his quest, communicating via pad and Sharpie pen and his hands, one of which had "yes"on it and the other "no."
The scenes between Oskar and the Renter are the best part of the film as the Renter slows Oskar's mad search to a reasonable pace.
The film hangs on the shoulders of young Horn and while his madcap chase and very adult thinking may be wearying, he is convincing. Bullock sort of walks through things in a disheveled way and Hanks is his usual wry and clever self, telling more with the shrug of a shoulder than many actors with a soliloquy.
This a sentimental journey of a movie and placing the whole thing on the thin back of Horn is a risk. But with a story like this one, it's bit much to use 9/11 as the grounding point. It picks a single death out of thousands and makes the rest trivial.
Direction tends toward the epic and the banal but gets the job done on time. Too bad about Bullock's somewhat minor role; I remember her as someone of fun. And, oh, yes, John Goodman is here as the doorman in a sort of cameo. Waste.
--- Sam Bauman
Cast
- Tom Hanks as Thomas Schell
- Sandra Bullock as Linda Schell
- Thomas Horn as Oskar Schell
- Max von Sydow as The Renter
- Viola Davis as Abby Black
- John Goodman as Stan the Doorman
- Jeffrey Wright as William Black
- Hazelle Goodman as Hazelle Black
- Zoe Caldwell as Oskar's grandmother
Directed by Stephen Daldry
Produced by Scott Rudin
Written by Eric Roth
Based on "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close" by Jonathan Safran Foer
Music by Alexandre Desplat
Cinematography Chris Menges
Editing by Claire Simpson
Running time 129 minutes, rated PG-13
