Ari Reviews: Extremely Loud and Extremely Close

A review - how long has it been, really?

 

Okay, it's been some time since I've done a review for a movie, book - anything, actually. Tonight, though, is a night for posting (catching up, basically) and let's start it off with a review, shall we?

 

Extremely Loud and Extremely Close was a movie my family and I watched a few weeks back during the week-long school suspension due to the really harsh rains that we experienced. My dad apparently stumbled upon this while searching for meanwhile movies to watch, not wanting my brother and I to pretty much laze around all day.

 

So ladies and gents, get your popcorn and lean back wherever you're leaning! The 'read more' is there for you to click on.

 

(spoilers may lie ahead!)

 

To be honest, from the start, I wasn't expecting much from this movie. Long summary made short, it tells of a boy named Oskar, who embarks on a journey across New York in order to find where the key (that his dad left) fits. He goes through this long process and carefully identifies the people that could be possible holders to the lock he seeks to find.

 

While doing this, Oskar struggles with his relationship with his mother, and something that he's been hiding ever since the day his father died, due to 9/11. He meets hundreds of people throughout his journey, including a strange old man who had recently moved in with his grandmother...

 

The movie, while having a fascinating plot, has a few things I didn't really like.

 

First was the pacing.

 

I know and understand that he had met hundreds of people throughout his search, but it went slower than I expected, and I found myself drifting off while watching. It only seemed to quicken at the climax, which was the most interesting point of the movie.

 

Second was the ending.

 

In Tagalog, we have this word called nakakabitin. Think of it this way - you're reading this really fantastic book (not a series, mind you), and when you finish it, you feel disappointed because there could have been much, much more to that ending.

 

Yep, that's how I felt.

 

Though the ending was pretty symbolic and nice, I felt like there was something lacking. We never found out what was bound by the lock that the key unlocked, and we never got to see a resolution between Oskar and the old man.

 

Third was how we never got to see much from Oskar's interactions with the people he met along the way.

 

I mean, he meet around four hundred, almost five hundred, even, and we were only shown a smidge of those people. I was really looking forward to those people, to know something about them, but they were brushed aside and only seen around the ending.

 

Okay, maybe all four hundred something of them couldn't be shown because a few had actual plot relevance, but what the hell.

 

But it isn't all negative - there are some things I enjoyed, too.

 

First was the acting, particularly that of Sandra Bullock. I enjoyed her role the most as Oskar's mother, Linda,  and you could pretty much see how she felt, what she was going through, how upset she was at the drifting away of her and her son.

 

Then, there was Viola Davis, who played the role of one of the first (or the first) people that Oskar met on his journey. I like how she was reintroduced in the latter part of the movie, and how she showed her character softening up to Oskar once he told her his story.

 

Thomas Horn can't be avoided - he did an excellent job of playing Oskar, the movie's central character. He portrayed Oskar in such a way that you wanted to punch the character for being such an irritating prick, but at the same time, wanted to hug him because he was going through so much. Characters like these can go either way - you can love them, or you can hate them. In my case, I'm stuck in the middle.

 

Other special mentions include Max von Sydow who portrayed the silent old man, and Jeffrey Wright, who played as the husband of Abby Black (Davis).

 

And then there's the plot, which seems so simple but is filled with complexities at the same time. The kid's struggling and he's coping with something so hard that he needs to keep in. But at the same time, he's at the point of bursting because of it.

 

And finally, there's the way the movie makes you think. Would you go great lengths to find such a seemingly insignificant thing? And what exactly was Oskar keeping? Who is this old man, and what is his connection to Oskar (if there ever is any)?

 

Overall, the movie has its flaws here and there. But with some patience and thinking, maybe it isn't so bad after all. It's not the best, but it's not the worst either.