Sin of Youth

In The Kite Runner, Amir (Khalid Abdalla) is an Afghan émigré living the American Dream.

A novelist residing in San Francisco with his wife Soraya (Atossa Leoni), he’s about to have his first novel published. Life is good until his phone rings, and a familiar voice from his past tells him to come back to Afghanistan, that “there is a way to be good again.”

The unexpected call forces him to confront and reflect on his gravest sin of youth – and we’re transported to late-1970s Kabul, to a time before the Russian invasion and the Taliban wreaked havoc in his homeland.

Then and there we meet a young Amir (Zekiria Ebrahimi), a privileged boy, and his younger, smaller friend Hassan (Ahmad Khan Mahmoodzada), the groundskeeper’s son.

Amir and Hassan are BFF; the latter always stands up to bullies for the former, much to the chagrin of Amir’s father, who wishes his son were stronger in character.

The marked differences between the two matter in that they are reminded of the hierarchy that exists between them only when they contemplate them. Otherwise, they might as well be brothers: Amir enjoys reading to Hassan the stories he writes, Hassan looks up to him with wide eyes, and they fly kites together.

As Afghanistan inches closer to war, though, their fates are sealed when, after a kite-fighting tournament, Amir’s fearful act of betrayal will divide the two forever, and set in motion a quest for redemption 20 years in the making.

Now, after two decades and by the power of one phone call, Amir has to face the consequences of his cowardice, and come to terms with a shattering truth if he really wants to set things right.

Unlike the kites featured in the movie, which represent freedom, happiness, possibility, the no-Hollywood-names cast The Kite Runner doesn’t soar.

It more than holds its weight in flight, though, but it doesn’t transcend, but it re-humanizes a nation that has been vilified in recent years.

Director Marc Forster delivers a beautiful, controversial movie, but David Benioff’s script, based on Khaled Hosseini’s beloved book, while earnest and oft-powerful, lacks a more climactic breakthrough, character development-wise. This is one of those movies that isn’t about the destination, but rather the journey.

But it’s a bumpy and long and subtitled journey that might prove a bit too clumsy.

My Rating **1/2

Photo: Paramount Vantage.