I have to say this wasn’t a film I was intending to see. It didn’t seem to be my sort of film from the trailers, but today the choices were limited so it was this or Ghost Rider, which my friend had already seen, so Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close it was.

The story begins with Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock in a loving family with their slightly odd, young son, Oskar. Tom is trying to teach him to be more confident and outgoing, sending him on ‘expeditions’ with cards with his name printed on to interact with people he meets and bring back clues in his made up mystery adventures, such as the missing 6^th borough of New York. When one faithful day this is all torn asunder when Tom dies in the World Trade Centre attacks with his son at home watching the towers fall on the TV and listening to messages he left on the answer machine. A year later a weepy Sandra Bullock is having trouble relating with the boy and he’s desperate to find a link with his father, when he comes across a key in an envelope with the name Black written on it. Believing this is another expedition is father planned for him he takes off to try and find the person named Black that this key belonged to.

So with the set up of the story out of the way let me say this, I don’t understand why it’s billed as starring Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock, they probably have about 5 minutes of screen time. The film rests squarely on the shoulders of Thomas Horn, Oskar, and the adventure he has looking for the meaning of this key. There’s a good performance from Max von Sydow and for the most part they hold the film pretty well. But it does feel overly long, I found myself wanting to close my eyes and go to sleep, and checking my watch a few times throughout the film. And while it would be hard to say I didn’t feel anything emotion for the characters suffering, I did feel it was laid on a bit thick, and it was manipulative rather than genuinely earned emotion. I also didn’t feel the ending was earned either. I don’t want to spoil, but it some how seemed a little like the writer thought ‘We’ve let this young lad roam New York City unattended for most of the film, how can we now make his mother look like a good mother now?’ and threw in the half baked ending.

It’s not really terrible but it isn’t really good either and between exploiting the 9/11 connection for all the emotional punch they can get, and honestly being dull for enough of the film to make me want to fall to sleep, I can’t really say it’s a film worth forking out to see at the cinema.