Full of possibilities, 'Extremely Loud' falters
Thomas Horn portrays Oskar Schell and Tom Hanks iss Thomas Schell in a scene from Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close.
REVIEWER’S RATING: ★ ★1/2
On the surface, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close seems a can’t miss project. Based on a best-selling novel by Jonathan Safran Foer, the film’s cast is crowded with Oscar winners and Oscar nominees. Another Oscar nominee, Stephen Daldry, directs from a screenplay by Oscar winner Eric Roth (Forrest Gump, The Insider).
There’s also the film’s setting and principal character: post-9/11 New York City and an 11-year-old boy who lost his father in the World Trade Center disaster. Looks so promising.
But Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close squanders the rich potential of its scenario and on-deck talent. It’s more irritating and exasperating than touching, healing or any of the positive things one might guess such a story, cast and crew would produce.
At the hazy center of it all is Oskar Schell. Even before his father’s death, he’s an angst-filled, socially maladapted child. Magnifying the loss of his father, Oskar in pre-9/11 days is a true daddy’s boy.
Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close tells its story through the common devices of voiceovers and flashbacks. First-time film actor Thomas Horn, playing Oskar, narrates and acts with an air of smug superiority. Obviously intelligent and verbally prolific, rude boy Oskar can be cruel to adults, especially his mother. The supposedly struggling child’s lofty confidence and bad attitude is off-putting.
Horn shares scenes with his father, albeit all of them past tense. Tom Hanks’ role as Oskar’s dad, Thomas, gets him top billing. But Hanks is seldom on screen. That leaves the nearly always on screen Horn to carry the film. Oskar being as unlikable as he is, a son only a father can love, he allegedly wins sympathy from supporting characters on screen, and there are many of them.
Before Thomas Schell dies on 9/11, he gently pushes his fearful son into the world. Schell sends Oskar in search of clues to the existence of the lost sixth borough of New York. He knows the boy’s investigation will compel him to speak to people, something Oskar finds difficult.
Oskar refers to 9/11 as “the worst day.” That day in the lives of Oskar and his family is re-created in Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close with surprisingly little emotional impact. Oskar’s grandmother looks concerned. So does the apartment building guard who the boy verbally abuses at every opportunity. Oskar’s mother cries. Oskar withdraws.
A year later, Oskar’s accidental discovery of a key which reveals itself when a vase in his father’s still untouched closet falls and shatters — a cinematic opportunity for more falling imagery — sends the boy on a new quest.
“There had to be a lock,” Oskar says of the key. “I’ll find it because he wanted me to find it.”
Oskar sees the search as a way to prolong his time with his dead dad. In the course of his mission to get closer to his father through the search for the key’s lock, Oskar unleashes his rage upon his mother. Saying such horrible things to her won’t help him gain an audience’s sympathy.
Co-stars Sandra Bullock (as Oskar’s mother) and John Goodman (Stan the apartment building doorman) have little to do in Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close. Both of them are fine in their brief scenes but, frankly, it’s surprising that they’re so underused. The same goes for co-stars Viola Davis, Max Von Sydow and even Hanks. They’re all supporting players for the annoying boy character who gets, but doesn’t deserve, most of this distinctly nonmagical movie’s attention.