Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (2011/Warner Blu-ray w/DVD)
Picture:
B- & C Sound: B- & C+ Extras: C- Film: C-
Stephen
Daldry made his name as a director on the hit film Billy Elliott (2000), then moved on to the decent The Hours (2002) and then waited a
while before he made the incredibly problematic The Reader (2008, reviewed elsewhere on this site). That film had some real issues dealing with
history and The Holocaust, but I figured it was likely a one-time major
complication. Now with Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close
(2011), he makes a film that is as problematic and borderline offensive when
dealing with the events and aftermath of the 9/11/01 attacks on New York City, et al.
Tom Hanks
and Sandra Bullock are a happily married couple in The Big Apple with a son
Oskar (Thomas Horn) who are going about their business when Hanks’ work takes
him on 9/11 to the top of one of the World
Trade Center
Towers hours before the
attack. Instead of telling this
chronologically, the script goes back and fourth, but especially focuses on
Oskar and how he has to deal with this.
Bullock is out of her element, John Goodman and Viola Davis show up as
“Safe” characters and Max Von Sydow is a mute older man with a secret or two
about Oskar’s life.
Oskar finds
a key and goes on a quest if it has something to do with his father, something
he left behind. Though there is much to
say about this event, including many things Oliver Stone’s somewhat forgotten
film on the subject missed, this tale does not know what it wants to be or to
do. The melodrama is borderline
offensive in its banality and trivializing of what happened as it distracts
from what is the more important event.
The cast is good because they had the money to hire them, but maybe
lesser known actors would have helped, but nothing can save the film from
Daldry’s awful directing, especially in the shrill, obnoxious, histrionic,
unconvincing, pointless, counterproductive and unrealistic performance by Horn
as a nine-year-old on an emotional rampage.
In real
life, responsible parents would have had him in therapy, but not here. He talks at, often yells, pouts, screams and
flips out for most of the long, long 129 minutes of this disturbingly
unbalanced work. He sounds like he is
ready to audition for Annie (and
maybe sell Pringles) in his yell-an-octave higher-than-he-should voice and when
all is said and done, was this really about 9/11, the underdeveloped characters
or anything? No. It plays like a borderline feel-good
mentality film in the worst possible way, just avoiding total trivialization of
its subject matter. Sydow is the only
one whose performance does not seem comatose (Daldry’s fault again) and it
shows that he should never do films about big subject material because he does
not have the directing talent or guts to handle them.
The
result is a film with “respect” and some critical positive response, but in
real life, it is a horrible film that few really like and the lack of box
office or buzz shows I cannot possibly be the only person who could not believe
how ultimately inept the whole affair was and always will be. Screenplay writer Eric Roth used to do great
scripts like Munich, The Insider and Suspect,
but his last one was The Curious Case Of
Benjamin Button, but he is clearly slipping even though this was based on a
book,
Unbelievable!
The 1080p
2.35 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer was shot with the new Arri
Alexa HD camera and exhibits some soft edges and detail limits throughout,
which is to be expected, Director of Photography Chris Menges is not awful, but
not that memorable either and the anamorphically enhanced DVD is much weaker,
so see it on Blu-ray if you have the choice.
The DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 5.1 lossless mix is towards the front
speakers, dialogue based and has limited sonics as a result despite some good
recording. The lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 on
the DVD is weaker still.
Extras
include UltraViolet Digital Copy and four making of featurettes exclusive to
Blu-ray.
- Nicholas Sheffo
