The Kite Runner |
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average rating
  | After spending years in California, Amir returns to his homeland in Afghanistan to help his old friend Hassan, whose son is in trouble. read more.
Starring Khalid Abdalla, Atossa Leoni and Shaun Toub, directed by Marc Forster.
Released 12 May 2008.
Paramount Home Entertainment. PAL.
Run Time 112 minutes. Classification  rrp £19.99. Our best price £12.00 |
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| The story is about the bond that develops in Afghanistan between a privileged youth, Amir, and the son of his father's servant, Hassan, who both have a love of kite flying. The relationship fractures when Hassan is set upon by a gang of neighborhood bullies during a kite-flying tournament and the other boy does nothing to help him. Hassan is a Hazara, a minority ethnic group of Shi'a Muslims. He is attacked by a group of Pashtun boys, lead by Assef, a young boy who heavily identifies with Hitler's doctrine. After this attack, Amir feels deep guilt and shame, which causes him to shut Hassan out of his life until years later, when the tragedy of the Taliban regime reconnects the youths... read more. |
| Jevon Taylor, 09 May 2008 |
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| “The Kite Runner” is an engaging story of childhood betrayal and adult redemption. It is well told, but not a spectacular film. I didn’t read the book that this film is a translation of as I thought it was a kind of “buy 2 get 1 free” in Waterstones glimpse into the lives of the exotic and less fortunate for middle-brow middle-class (nice) white women living in suburban England. Watching the film, however, I had to dismiss some of this prejudice. It is a good story populated with sympathetic, if not complex, characters, and that is, really, enough to make a film worth watching. Nevertheless, there were a few things about “The Kite Runner” that I had a problem with. The greatest of these was that it all looked like it was filmed on set, a physically contrived world occupied by extras and actors, crew and camera. It lacked the realism that all other films I have seen about / set in Afghanistan have, and that is something I missed. Perhaps because of this, the film failed to capture any sense of place, either of landscape or cityscape. Neither did it convey much of a sense of distance, culturally as well as geographically, between Afghanistan and the USA (or therefore time). This is a major flaw considering the film’s protagonist is a displaced Afghan refugee. Similarly, the sequences where kites soar above Kabul, and later a park in the USA, potentially spectacular and intended tense / emotional highpoints, were lacking. Whilst I want to blame this on the CGI of the cities beneath the kites, I think my disappointment with these scenes was actually symptomatic of my inability to empathise fully with the characters and / or locations. Despite this, however, the film has just as many good moments, some of them quite shocking, and, as I have said above, does tell a good story. A story worth watching. |
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