The Kite Runner.

"As a purported sympathetic view of Muslims from a dream factory that has always painted them as buffoonish terrorist fodder for Schwarzeneggerian dispatch, The Kite Runner is undeniably something of a baby-steps breakthrough," writes Michael Koresky for indieWIRE. "Yet [Marc] Forster's touristy exoticization infuses nearly every frame, and, with the exception of one brief, late visit to a mosque, religion seems to play little to no part.... The film version of The Kite Runner is less a work of passion or political commitment than an utterly expected big-screen version of a pricey hot property."

New York's David Edelstein finds it "brisk and bland, but its blandness might work at the box office, where movies in which little boys get raped don't tend to pack in the crowds."

Updated through 12/16.

"The best things in The Kite Runner are the portrait of Kabul's flourishing upper-class life before the Soviets and then the Taliban took over, and the depiction of the bleak hypocrisies of the Taliban period - the disgusting cruelties performed in the name of righteousness, and the madness that makes it an offense to look at a woman's face but acceptable to keep a young boy as a sex slave," writes David Denby in the New Yorker. "The movie's heart is certainly in the right place—it's a quietly outraged work—but I wish there were more excitement in it from moment to moment."

"There is something unexpected about the actor Khalid Abdalla. Watch him as the terrified, babyish 9/11 lead hijacker in the harrowing United 93 and then see him as the guilt-ridden, middle-aged Afghan-American author in the new film The Kite Runner, and you would barely believe he is the same person." Patrick Barkham profiles him for the Guardian.

"Usually stories about Afghanistan fall into 'Taliban and war on terror' or 'narcotics' - the same old things," Khaled Hosseini, who wrote the novel, tells Erika Milvy in Salon. "But here's a story about family life, about customs, about the drama within this household, a window into a different side of Afghanistan."

Earlier: An October entry; Newsweek's David Ansen; and Rahul Hamid's interview with Forster for Cineaste.

Update, 12/11: "[Y]ou'd think Forster, who made the admirably strange and lively Stranger Than Fiction, would seize the day and all manner of audience demographics with the colorful movie equivalent of a page-turner," writes Ella Taylor in the Voice. "Instead, he's made a drama as bland and beige as its tasteful palette."

Updates, 12/12: Dan Lybarger talks with Homayoun Ershadi for Hollywood Bitchslap.

In the New York Times, David M Halbfinger profiles "bankroller" Sidney Kimmel: "For the past three years Mr Kimmel- a garment-industry titan and philanthropist who built Jones Apparel Group into a $5 billion publicly traded company - has been spending tens of millions of dollars on small but often daring movies. His quirky comedies and high-minded dramas have frequently won favorable reviews, but none have become hits." And following The Kite Runner will be Charlie Kaufman's Synecdoche, New York.

Updates, 12/13: "In spite of being lovingly realized and creatively cast, The Kite Runner is a simplistic adaptation of a powerful, multi-layered story," writes Chris Wangler in the Boston Phoenix. "Your feeling leaving the theater might be less 'I should read the book!' than 'Where's the beef?'"

Robert W Welkos meets Ershadi for the Los Angeles Times: "He avoids discussing the political situation in his country, describing as 'so far so good' the questions posed to him by American journalists. Indeed, he appears eager to answer any question put to him. 'As long as they don't ask me about politics,' he says."

"John Kiriakou, the CIA agent who led the team that waterboarded a high-ranking member of Al Qaeda in 2002, served as the security consultant for Paramount's soon-to-be released film, The Kite Runner." For In These Times, Lindsay Beyerstein tells the story behind the whisking away of those kids and the delayed release of the film.

Jason Guerrasio talks with Forster for Filmmaker.

Updates, 12/14: "Like the recent film version of Ian McEwan's novel Atonement, another story ignited by the destructive behavior of a pubescent child, The Kite Runner presents a world informed by a variant of original sin," notes Manohla Dargis in the New York Times. But Forster "has been soundly defeated by The Kite Runner. Despite the film's far-flung locations (it was shot primarily in China), there is remarkably little of visual interest here; the setups are banal, and the scenes lack tension, which no amount of editing can provide."

In the New York Sun, Nicolas Rapold lists ten literary adaptations appearing in theaters this season alone: "Of these, Kite Runner, which tracks a class-crossing boyhood friendship in Soviet-era Afghanistan, might be the worst, but it bears valuable lessons. For one thing, the hackneyed, bland drama reaffirms that the industry's chief interest is an adaptation's built-in audience of readers and name recognizers."

"The film's main departures and omissions come in its final act, where Hollywood regulations require that the pace must accelerate, and anything resembling reflection or languor is verboten," writes Bilge Ebiri at Nerve. "These scenes also feel like the film's weakest spot, not because it stops being ridiculously faithful to the book but because, in trying to make the story more cinematic, Forster and [screenwriter David] Benioff take some of the more melodramatic elements of the novel and send them over the top."

"The Memoirs of a Geisha ordeal (another enervating DreamWorks buy-up) comes to mind, but instead of shooting for glamorous sex as filtered through the vibe of a high-end LA massage parlor, Foster's film envisions Afghan life to have the melodramatic simplicity of a kebob-house raga, or, more pertinently, American TV shorthand and stereotype," writes Michael Atkinson in the Stranger.

"It takes a special kind of heartlessness not to be moved by moments in The Kite Runner," writes Keith Phipps at the AV Club. "But it also takes an unusual amount of guilelessness not to be a little suspicious of it as well."

"One reason the movie version of The Kite Runner gets into trouble despite being faithful to the book is that things play differently on screen than they do on the page," writes Kenneth Turan in the Los Angeles Times. "Even though Amir's actions are identical in both places, on the page, because he is the narrator, we have an instinctive sympathy with him. On screen, he is presented as one of many characters, and though we understand why he feels so glum so much of the time, it is not as involving to be with him as an adult as it is as a child."

"How long has it been since you saw a movie that succeeds as pure story?" asks Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times. "This is a magnificent film."

Updates, 12/15: "Kabul has changed a great deal since I last saw it in 1976," writes Khaled Hosseini in the Guardian. "As I gazed out the car window at the endless destruction blurring by, I realised that there is not a single block in Kabul that hasn't in some way been scarred by war.... The poverty and disarray in many areas is unspeakable."

"The Kite Runner is a tear-jerker for the politically conscious," writes Laura Flanders at Alternet. "Unfortunately, when it comes to real-life U.S.-Afghan relations, the metaphors hit more bases than what's actually on the screen.... We know from President Carter's advisor Zbigniew Brzezinkski that the official version of Afghan history is hokum. US intervention didn't follow the Soviet Army's invasion, it preceded it.... Some will say it's unfair to hold the movie of a novel to task for repeating the propaganda version of US history, but the myth of the United States as macho rescuer is not only misleading, it's deadly - for people in Afghanistan and around the world."

For Cinematical's James Rocchi, the film is "worthy of at least a little praise, not only as a sensitively and beautifully made film but also as a deliberate attempt to reclaim Afghanistan - and the Afghan people - from an image that we in the West have crafted mostly from brief news reports of trouble or newspaper articles explaining a broken nation's shattered past." And he interviews Hosseini, too.

"Banned during the Taliban's rule, kite flying is once again the main recreational escape for Afghan boys and some men," reports Kirk Semple in the NYT.

"This is a confident and honorable movie - and a gripping one," writes Richard Schickel in Time. "I've come to think that stories about ordinary people blown helplessly through the world on the winds of endless war were the central narrative of the 20th century and, likely, the central one of the 21st century as well."

"The sap factor runs high here, with the phrase 'There is a way to be good again' popping up not once but twice," writes Alonso Duraldo for MSNBC. "Fans of the book may be delighted to see this story writ large upon the screen, but those approaching the material cold may wonder what all the fuss is about. The pacing is lugubrious, the performances unremarkable, and the movie itself mostly disposable."

Update, 12/16: Cinematical's James Rocchi talks with Benioff.

Posted by dwhudson at December 10, 2007 9:40 AM