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The Kite Runner
The Kite
Runner
DreamWorks Pictures, 122mins, PG-13
Directed by
Marc Forster
 Few countries have been screwed in the last part of the 20th
centuries and the first part of the 21st as badly as Afghanistan.
From 1979 to the present day, there's been nothing but war and evil
governance. Since the US military got overtly involved in 2001, the
west has been trying to figure out exactly what is it in the Afghan
character that has brought this on, that is if it DID bring this on,
and there've been a number of excellent films by Afghans trying to
bring the real Afghanistan to the silver screen and world
understanding. This is something different, a Hollywood movie trying
to do the same.
Khaled Hosseini's slightly autobiographical novel mostly takes place
in two lost Afghanistans: The third-world paradise that was Kabul
before the Soviet invasion and the third-world hell that was the
Taliban's version. David Benioff's script tries to replicate that,
and for the most part succeeds.
The films starts in the year 2000: Amir(Khalid Abdalla) is a writer
living in San Francisco with his lovely wife Soraya(Atossa Leoni).
His new novel is just out, and is all excited about the prospect,
when he gets a phone call from Rahim Khan(Shaun Toub), an old family
friend, who asks him to fly to Pakistan ASAP, and the film goes
immediately into flashback mode…
The title of the movie immediately becomes clear. For in Kabul in
1978, before the unpleasantness reached beyond the highest corridors
of power, the child Amir(Zekiria Ebrahimi) and his best friend
Hassan(Ahmad Khan Mahmoodzada), were very much into the sport of
kite fighting. Amir's father(Homayoun Ershadi) had won the
championships once when he was a kid, and with Amir being a bit of a
wuss, and he feels his father's disappointment deeply.
Hassan is a gentle soul as well, and they are threatened by the
bully Assef(Elham Ehsas), who is a racist [Hassan not being a
Pashdun, the top ethnic group] and his goon squad. Other than that,
there's primarily the joy of being a kid, and on the day Amir wins
the tournament, Assef does something to Hassan that has gotten the
young actor who plays Assef death threats.
After the incident, Amir begins to reject Hassan and his father, who
has been the family's faithful servant for decades. This part is
heartbreaking. All the bad things that his father has feared and
Assef has claimed seem to be true, and our hero can't stand it.
The Soviets invade and Amir and his Dad escape to Pakistan, with Dad
showing what real heroism is. Then the film flashes forward to San
Francisco and the Amir's romance with Soroya before getting back to
the beginning and the meat of the film, the quest to find and rescue
Hassan's son Sohrab(Ali Danesh Bakhtyari) from what turns out to be,
obviously, the clutches of the adult Assef(Abdul Salam Yusoufzai),
round and round.
Obviously, the kids are the heart of the film, and they all managed
to give really good performances, the guilt Amir feels really shows
on Zekiria Ebrahimi's face and if he manages to survive this, is
going to have a genuine career at this.
The film is is a wonder, what with everything done in an exotic
foreign language with child actors with no experience, this by a
western filmmaker. It's worth a look.
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