Synopsis:

The kiss of death for many films is the tagline, "based on the award-winning book".  The Kite Runner attempted to downplay the book note by promoting that the director of the film is the same that did Monster's Ball and Finding Neverland, an odd attempt since nearly everyone has at least heard of the book.

The Freak's Rating: C+ : The Kite Runner is summed up nicely in the first paragraph of Brian's review and I'll leave it at that.  Direction in the film was well done.  Acting was par for the course, with the one exception of the adult Amir.  Khalid Abdalla plays the adult Amir wonderfully.  Abdalla was last seen as the lead hijacker on United 93.  He is a solid actor and his talents are showcased once again here.  I thought the child actors were mediocre and the storyline was a little slow for my taste.  Pacing is an issue when you try to bring a dramatic book to the screen and the problems were evident throughout the flick.  So though I love the acting by Abdalla, I have to discredit the film due to its direction and pacing.

Brian's Rating: C+ : The story is based on a novel about an Afghan citizen, Amir.  He flees during the invasion of the Soviet Union when he is a child, and in the year 2000, comes back during the reign of the Taliban to rescue another boy.  The first half of the movie depicts his life as a child in Kabul, and the second half reveals the reason for his return to the country. 

In the first half, he has a friend, Hassan, that is good at running down the losing kites from a kite fight.  The loser gets cut, and the kite flies down to the ground.  In the second half of the film, indirect ties to this friend is what brings Amir back to Afghanistan.

The movie has some problems.  Like many adapted novels, the trick a director has to overcome is how to relate the character motivations and thought patterns to a viewer with the absence of the stream of consciousness mechanism that literature can use.  The movie did a poor job of this in my opinion.  I constantly found myself asking, "Why is the character acting like he is"?  Maybe it was bad acting, but more likely it was due to a failure in the script to convey the true arcs for the characters.  In the end, if you pay attention, you can pick up the main points, but its a constant struggle.

Most of this movie was boring.  About 60 minutes of interesting story stretched into a full movie.  I think you were supposed to care about the main character, Amir, or the main character's friend, Hassan.  However, the story follow Amir, and its hard to care about what happens to him.  Hassan is more interesting, but he is a sidekick at best.  Added into the mix is a small glimpse of what life was like under the Taliban.  However, this is only touched on, and is sort of just tacked onto the story in an ill-fitting manner.

The ending was a little bit better, and started to save the film for me.  That is until the writer dropped in the final line that directly brings you full circle into the first half of the movie.  The final line was corny and was disappointing to me.  Ultimately, the story is about forgiveness, and friendship.  Good concepts, but the presentation was lackluster.

It would have got a B- without the final line of dialog, but as it is, I would not recommend it to anybody.

Jen's Rating: A- : Great movie, memorable.  Loved the character and selflessness these characters had.

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