Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

[Slammr (imported)]

Solidly crafted, impeccably acted and self-important in the way that Oscar loves, Extremely Loud is also incredibly close to exploitation. That'll happen when 9/11 is your driving plot point, as it is in this adaptation of Jonathan Safran Foer's controversial 2005 novel (Foer was hammered by John Updike and The New York Times for piggybacking on a global tragedy). A decade after the 2001 event, memories are still raw among the more than 3,000 children whose parents died in the attacks. Eleven-year-old Oskar Schell (Thomas Horn), a lonely but gifted child who may have Asperger's, is still reeling from the World Trade Center death of his father, Thomas (Tom Hanks), a jeweler Oskar draws falling from the towers and then rising upward. Oskar has hidden the phone machine, on which his father left six messages, from the eyes of his lawyer mother, Linda (a quietly vivid Sandra Bullock). The troubled boy finds a way to deal with his grief when he breaks a blue vase in his father's closet and finds an envelope with a key inside. The envelope is marked "Black." So Oskar – knowing his dad's penchant for games – sets out across New York's five boroughs to find all 472 people named Black in the book and dig for an answer.

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I absolutely loved this movie. I have a grandson that has mild Asperger's. He's incredibly smart, but has trouble relating to anyone outside his family and never liked things that weren't part of his usual routine. This kid reminded me of him. For a long time after the movie ended, no one moved or spoke.

I didn't feel the movie was an exploitation of 911. Maybe in 2005, when the book was written, it would have seemed to be.