Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Rated PG-13
Runtime: 129 minutes

There have already been any number of movies about the national nightmare that was 9-11. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close takes a different tack by dealing less with the attack than with its aftermath as far as one particular family is concerned.

We first meet the Schell family three days before 9-11. Jeweler Thomas Schell (Tom Hanks) and his wife Linda (Sandra Bullock) have one precocious child, Oskar (Thomas Horn). Oskar is brilliant, but has other foibles (a fear of talking to strangers, for example) that he needs to overcome. His father creates challenges for him to complete that incorporate overcoming his fears; Oskar knows this, but loves both his father and the games they play together more than anything.

Then comes what Oskar refers to as "The Worst Day." When the elder Schell dies in the Twin Towers, everything changes, and Oskar has an understandably difficult time. It takes him a year, but he finally gets the courage to look for an old camera in his father's closet. He finds the camera, but he also finds a key. Assuming that the key is part of his father's next game, Oskar makes it his mission to find the lock that the key is intended to open.

Oskar's mother worries about him, as does his grandmother (Zoe Caldwell). Even the apartment building's doorman, Stan (John Goodman) keeps an eye on Oskar. But Oskar is more concerned with the key. Oh, and with the very strange renter (Max von Sydow) his grandmother has taken in...

Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock, both Oscar™ winners, are good but have relatively limited roles. I was actually most impressed with young Thomas Horn. When I learned it was his first movie, I was even more stunned by the performance he gave! (If you've heard of Horn before, it's probably because he won Kids' Week on Jeopardy! a couple of years ago, which probably makes him almost as smart as the character he plays in this movie.) Max von Sydow is also impressive, particularly so given that he says...nothing. Not a word. And yet his acting is amazing.

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is based on a book by the same name. The screenplay was written by Eric Roth (who has such notable writing credits as The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Forrest Gump on his résumé), and the movie was directed by Stephen Daldry (who also helmed the brilliant The Reader).

BOTTOM LINE I really wanted to like Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close more than I did. With actors and filmmakers bearing the kind of pedigree that these all do, I'm somehow even more disappointed. There were moments in the film where I was heartbroken, and certainly the interspersed (brief) footage of real news reports on 9-11 brought back some of that emotion as well. But I still left the theatre making plans for what I was going to do next instead of thinking about the movie, and that, friends, isn't a particularly good recommendation as far as I'm concerned!

ADDED NOTE My friend, who is at least as much a movie nut as I am, would have given Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close a much higher rating than I did. She absolutely loved it. I can only wish that I had, too.

POLITICAL NOTES Strangely enough, given the subject matter, there are none.

FAMILY SUITABILITY Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is rated PG-13 for "emotional thematic material, some disturbing images, and language." Any film in which a child loses a much loved father is probably not suitable for younger children, and when it happens in such a nightmarish way as this, that only makes it more difficult to watch.