Movie and Television Reviews

The Kite Runner seems to have come and gone without making much of an impact. I don't remember seeing it advertised in a theater. I never heard co-workers discuss the movie or people buzz over it on television or radio. The academy didn't nominate The Kite Runner for an Oscar. Odd, because Kite Runner is one of the best movies from 2007 and the kind of film that sophisticated movie goers fawn over.

Kite Runner tells a simple yet powerful, beautiful, and sometimes disgusting story: In pre-Soviet-invasion Afghanistan, Amir (Zekeria Ebrahimi and then Khalid Abdalla) lives with his upper middle class, Mustang-driving (a sweet 69), moderate father Baba (Homayoun Ershadi); his servant; and his servant's son Hassan (Ahmad Khan Mahmidzada) who also happens to be Amir's best friend.

Amir and Hassan pass the time engaging the neighborhood children in kite combat. As you can imagine from the trailer, the kite scenes are the most spectacular in the movie. The kite fighting isn't just a clever backdrop, however; it's a metaphor for the relationship between the boys. Amir occupies the higher social and ethnic class, but, as brave in life as he is bold in kite fighting, kind, and helpful; it's Hassan who's the superior human being.

Amir likes to write and reads the illiterate Hassan stories.

A bigger boy rapes Hassan after Hassan tries to protect Amir's kite. Amir's inaction sets the course for his own life. He lies to expel the living reminder of his shame, Hassan, and Hassan's father from the house. When the Russian army invades Afghanistan, Baba takes his son to Pakistan, and, from there, they both go to California. Amir marries into another expat Afghan family and enjoys success as a writer.

A phone call interrupts Amir's peaceful American life. Family friend Rahim Kahn (Shaun Toub) is dying and asks for Amir's help. Amir arrives in Pakistan and Rahim tells him a family secret that morally obliges Amir to enter now-Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.

Some of the coincidences at the end of Kite Runner are a little contrived and the climax may disappoint special-effects fans, but it's difficult to believe that The Kite Runner won't move anybody who invests the two hours required to watch it.

Message/Politcs:

The Kite Runner is very much a "guy" movie- perhaps "the guy movie," for it deals with the central male concern: bravery under fire. Every man has at least one "moment of truth" where circumstances test his mettle. Despite having his father who later saves an Afghani woman from rape at the hands of a Russian soldier and, of course, Hassan, as examples of masculinity (It's ironic that the braver boy is the one raped.); Amir fails his test. Were it not for his later redemption, that moment could have cast the die for the rest of Amir's life, but, transformed by his intrepid act of love, Amir returns home and stands up to his father-in-law, thus breaking his cycle of cowardice and shame.

The movie doesn't suggest that writers are inherently less noble than "common people." The noble Baba plys an intellectual trade.

America's peaceful, free, and prosperous lifestyle looks very good in comparison to Afghanistan under America's two greatest enemies and purveyors of evil from the last thirty years- Soviet Russia and Al Qaeda.

Some people might not like it because it shows that bad things can happen in the world without the involvement of the United States.

*It's the effort that counts. Even an honorable loss is better than never having fought.