Preview: Stephen A Russell

NOT having read Jonathan Safran Foer’s incredibly popular book, I had scant awareness of the story behind Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, other than a vague notion it involved the events of September 11, 2001.

The deeply sentimental plot revolves around the profound sense of loss felt by an autistic boy, Oskar (Thomas Horn) after his father dies in the attack on the twin towers.

One year later Oskar finds a key in an envelope marked ‘‘Black’’ in his father’s closet, and sets about visiting every person by that name in the New York City phonebook to find the lock he hopes will somehow keep his father’s memory alive.

In better hands, this could have been a deeply moving film. Instead, heavy-handed direction from Stephen Daldry (The Reader) and a clunky, emotionally manipulative adaptation from Forrest Gump scribe Eric Roth results in blunt, trite schmaltz. The shoddy script shoehorns every emotional trick in the book, while the score wrangles yet more cheap tears.

Horn is a deeply irritating child actor. Sandra Bullock makes a strong impression with scant material, but her role is ruined by a last act revelation that stretches the credibility of this film’s already ludicrous concept too far.

The role-call of random Blacks are barely glimpsed, largely relegated to montage sequences, while the talented Max Von Sydow is wasted in a mute role. A portly Tom Hanks is an unbelievable super-parent caricature in fleeting flashbacks.

Brief glimpses of falling bodies and smouldering towers are borderline offensive, given how little weight they receive here, ultimately coming across like a crass hook to add deeper meaning to this contrived mess.