Foreign films are currently stirring the stagnant cauldron of Hollywood, tossing dashes of global awareness and pinches of stylistic pizzazz into the otherwise homogenized stew of Americana. The latest addition is director Marc Forster's The Kite Runner,"" an adaptation of Khaled Hosseini's best-selling novel that tells a story of two Afghani children.
Right now, you're all probably thinking, ""Sweet! A movie about kites? What a neat way to snap out of my stressful final's rut!"" You've probably even forged an elaborate fantasy where the cast of ""Mary Poppins"" bursts into some Middle Eastern orphanage belting out ""Let's go fly a kite!"" in Persian. Don't fool yourself. While it's refreshing to see a foreign film avoiding sex and samurais as its marketing crutch, ""The Kite Runner"" - whose main themes include sacrifice, grief and redemption - provides few jolly diversions.
Broken into three chunks, the film's first chapter is its strongest, following the turbulent friendship of Amir and Hassan, two 11-year-olds from different ethnic backgrounds living in 1978's politically polarized Afghanistan. While the story amputates 22 years of politics into two hours, its focus isn't political, but personal.
The complex friendship sustained between Amir - of the elite Pashtun majority - and Hassan - of the reviled Hazara minority - despite constant racist ridicule, is especially touching. Zekeria Ebrahimi and Ahmad Khan Mahmidzada deliver powerful debuts as young Amir and Hassan respectively, contributing the film's few lighthearted moments. Their common passions for Steve McQueen, slingshots, storytelling and kite flying are relatable, well crafted and genuine.
In the film's most indelible scene, Amir and Hassan compete in Kabul's kite-flying, Super Bowl equivalent. Amid stunning cinematography and snitch-like cameras whose wide-angle lenses zip through a sky so cluttered with kites it could be a patchwork quilt, the sequence illustrates the duo's triumph over the surrounding ethnic hatred when their kite is the last one flying.
However, this brief scene of victory is quickly shattered by one of brutality, as Amir witnesses a gang of Pashtuns raping Hassan. Unable to find the courage to intervene, Amir becomes scarred by the experience, unable to live up to Hassan's loyalty for him. Soon after, when the Soviets invade, it separates the two for good, leaving Amir racked with guilt.
Sadly, as the film progresses, its plot and acting mirror Afghanistan's fate, crumbling into dust and rubble. Skipping ahead first 10, then 20 years, the film's remaining two-thirds delves into Amir's new life as a writer in California, flinging together some wishy-washy father-son moments, a romantic plot device matching Amir with a fellow refugee and finally, a string of soap-operatic plot twists concocted to send Amir back to his homeland for epic/implausible redemption.
""The Kite Runner"" obviously works best when substituting the camera as narrator. Still, its eventual dissention into crackpot storytelling tugs at our heartstrings a bit too much, forgetting that, unlike kites, we have brains. While the filmmakers delayed its release six weeks so the young actors could safely leave the country (fearing its controversial rape scene might provoke violent backlash from Afghanistan radicals), the film could have used a few more delays to save its beautiful cinematography from its boring script.
