A moving adaptation of the novel by Khaled Hosseini, Marc Forster’s The Kite Runner succeeds in accurately retelling the book’s compelling story even though it occasionally falters along the way.
The film begins with Amir and Hassan, two young boys growing up in Afghanistan; Amir’s father Baba (Homayoun Ershadi, who’s excellent) is a wealthy secularist, and Hassan’s father is his servant.
Hassan’s place in society leads a group of older boys to attack him, causing Amir to feel such guilt that he pushes Hassan away.
Later in life, Amir and his father are living in San Francisco among a group of Afghan expatriates, having fled Afghanistan when the country was invaded by Soviet forces. One day, he gets a call from an old friend, and travels back to the now-Taliban-ruled country to aid Hassan’s young son.
The scenes of the boys’ childhood are touching, poetic, tragic – everything they should be; the San Francisco scenes are also compelling.
Towards the end however, during Amir’s return to Afghanistan, the film nearly derails. Taliban villains are presented in a borderline cartoonish fashion, and the terror they hold over the country is never fully conveyed.
Politics – particularly, the role of the US in bringing the Taliban to power in Afghanistan – are also ignored here, though they were carefully sidestepped in the novel as well.
While the film succeeds as a pure story, the powerful themes in Hosseini’s novel deserved a more accurate representation here.
Still, the strengths of the film outweigh its weaknesses; some of early scenes here are unforgettable.
