MARC Forster’s film version of Khaled Hosseini’s interna tional best seller “The Kite Run ner,” wreathed in good intentions and Oscar aspirations, often rises to the occasion, though it never quite soars.
It’s what Hollywood calls a ‘tweener – not quite edgy or artistic enough to satisfy the art-house crowd, but a tough sell for family audiences because of its extensive subtitles, two-hour-plus running time, and a (tastefully rendered) male rape scene.
And, oh yes, a Mideast background, something that moviegoers of all ages have been shunning this season.
The Swiss-born director does get major props for terrific performances by genuine Afghan youngsters – Zekeria Ebrahimi and Ahmad Khan Mahmidzada – as the book’s protagonists Amir and Hassan, and for shooting in Western China, which stands in quite convincingly for 1978 Kabul.
Amir’s widowed dad, Baba (the excellent Homayoun Ershadi), is a wealthy Pashtun merchant, while Hassan is a family servant and Amir’s best friend who belongs to the despised Hazara minority.
The film is at its best during scenes showing an exciting kite-fighting competition won by the bookish Amir with Hassan’s help. But Amir is too much of a coward to come to Hassan’s rescue when his pal is later brutally attacked by racist bullies.
Amir is so ashamed that he ends up driving Hassan and his dad out of the household just before the Russian invasion, which sends Amir’s family fleeing to the United States.
In 2000, the adult Amir (now played by Khalid Abdalla, more effective as the lead hijacker in “United 93”) is living in San Francisco and has just published his first novel when he gets a call from a distressed Hassan, who pleads with him to return to Afghanistan.
Waving aside objections from his wife (“Is it safe? What about the book tour?”), Amir returns to Afghanistan, where he risks his life – and finally atones for his childhood sin – by attempting to rescue Hassan’s son from the Taliban.
There was no shortage of sobbing at the screening I attended, but in the final analysis this is more an entertaining than a profound film that somehow seems rushed and overlong at the same time.
The film’s depiction of contemporary Kabul is sobering, but the film tiptoes around politics as cautiously as it does that ambiguously-filmed rape scene, which the father of one of the young actors has claimed he was tricked into doing.
On the whole, “The Kite Runner” is a worthy enterprise, even if the studios involved have shamefully generated publicity by evacuating the child actors from Afghanistan because of a vague threat to their safety.
THE KITE RUNNERRespectable tear-jerker.In English, Dari, Pashtu, Urdu and Russian with English subtitles. Running time: 122 minutes. Rated PG-13 (sexual assault, profanity). At the Lincoln Square, the Sunshine, the First and 62nd.