The Kite Runner

Rated PG-13

Starring: Khalid Abdalla, Homayoun Ershadi

            Khaled Hosseini’s novel The Kite Runner is one of the most popular and moving works of literature in recent years, and the film adaptation, as directed by the talented Marc Forster (Finding Neverland, Stranger Than Fiction), is a testament to hardworking filmmakers concerned with the quality of modern films. Whereas The Kite Runner could have included major stars and plodding action sequences not found in the novel, Forster and his crew opted instead to cast brilliant unknown actors and shoot most of their picture in the Dari dialect, adding an authenticity that would be missing in a typical Hollywood production.

            The film is dazzling in capturing the long-forgotten beauty of the Afghanistan of the 1970s, before the Russian Communists seized the land leading to the later rise of the Taliban. Amir, a well-to-do Afghani boy, plays in the streets of Kabul with his best friend Hassan, the Hazara son of his father’s private servant. Despite their difference in social classes, Amir and Hassan have a brotherly bond that is unexpectedly shattered when Amir witnesses a terrible crime against Hassan in an alleyway and cannot bring himself to face Hassan again.

            Years later, after Amir and his father Baba (the great Homayoun Ershadi) have fled to the United States, the now-married Amir (Khalid Abdalla) receives a call from his Afghani mentor Rahim Kahn urging him at once to return to his home country and participate in an effort to rescue the orphaned son of Hassan. There is a way to be good again, Kahn says, and Amir’s journey of redemption leads to a soulful finale that addresses such complex themes as guilt, loyalty and forgiveness.

            The acting is phenomenal from even the tiniest of roles, and Afghanistan has never been portrayed as harrowing and as realistic as in this film. The contrasting segments of pre-Taliban Afghanistan and the modern-day aftermath are shocking, providing a haunting landscape on which Amir must journey. For such a rich novel full of information, Forster impressively covers nearly every segment featured in Hosseini’s book. Above all, The Kite Runner is a film that, although containing bleak subject matter, offers hope not only for the future of mankind but also for the redemption of every human.

Return to Archive List