Movie Review: "Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close"

"Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close": C+. When I go to a movie I try to remember to find out the running time beforehand. I then make a mental note at the half-way point of the film (after sneaking a peek or two at my cell phone clock) to segregate what happened prior to that time from what happens in the last half. The purpose of this little mental exercise is to be able to "set the movie up" for you in my eagerly anticipated (?) review without revealing too much. There is nothing worse than a movie review which should have contained spoiler warnings but didn't.

At the half way mark of this two hour movie, this is all we know. Pre-teener Oskar Schell (Thomas Horn) is a very bright young man who lost his beloved father (Tom Hanks) when the World Trade Center towers were destroyed. Oskar and his dad were very tight. One of their favorite pastimes was reconnaissance games, in which Oskar's dad would draw up clues leading Oskar to search all over New York City for a reward. After the father dies, Oskar scrounges around his dad's closet and finds a key in a small envelope marked "Black." He proceeds to traipse all over the city with the hope that whatever the key unlocks will reveal to him something that his father wanted him to find. Just as we approach the half-way point, Oskar comes face to face with a mysterious mute stranger who rents a room from Oskar's grandmother. The renter, who is listed in the credits as "The Renter," is played by Max von Sydow, for my money the best part of the movie.

As related above, since the writers and directors have slowly built up the search involving the mysterious key, spending one hour just to set the stage, one might expect either a fascinating, or perhaps dramatic, adventure, preferably both. One would hope the intriguiging Renter would prove to be an essential part of Oskar's sleuthing. Put another way, it would not be unreasonable to expect a big payoff - - a "wow moment" for lack of a better phrase. I am sorry to report, the only feeling of "wow" I had was thinking about how little of that there was for a movie that had big name stars and has been promoted via previews for at least two months prior to its release this weekend. Sandra Bullock is wasted as the mom. She has less screen time than does Tom Hanks, even though Hanks' character is doneskie in the first reel. We figure out the Renter's secret well before Oskar does. And Oskar, although a cute, precocious kid, is not my cup of tea for a two hour stretch. I could not buy into the relationship between him and his mother, both in the way he talked to her and especially with respect to the secret he kept from her. His dead father would not have approved.