Released: 2011
Drama
Director: Stephen Daldry
Starring: Tom Hanks, Sandra Bullock
Running Time: 129 minutes
Rated: PG-13
The breakdown: A child loses his father to the 9-11 attacks and proceeds to go on a mission throughout New York to try to find out what a key that his father left behind opens.
I had a good feeling this was going to be a crappy movie when I saw the previews for it.
For one thing, the kid that's the main character tried very hard to enunciate every single word in his voice overs instead of just talking like a normal human being, but be clear. It was distracting and very annoying.
For another, it uses 9-11 as a plot device and unless it's an excellent story with great characters it shouldn't be done.
For example, the story line is that the kid loses his father in the attacks on the World Trade Centers. This wasn't necessary for the story. Why not just make his father die in a subway accident, or have a heart attack, or get mugged on the streets and then shot? There's a lot of ways this boy could've lost his father through death, but why choose this event? I'll tell you why, because the author probably thought people would pay more attention to the book he wrote and the movie that was made from it, if he had worked in the worst terrorist attack in world history. There's no good reason for it, and the only reason I can see is profit for the author...sad, very sad. If it had been a true story, that's different, but it's not at all. Although, I'm sure some people got that impression.
So here's the plot.
A family lives in New York. On 9-11 the father dies in one of the buildings that collapses. He calls his wife, and the house leaving multiple messages that he's ok, but the 6th message is cut off when the building collapses and it's presumed that he died. The boy has some sort of disease that resembles Asperger's Syndrome which makes for difficulties with social interaction and intense interest in a few subjects. The boy hides the answering machine from his mother and never tells her of it, thinking he's protecting her from pain. This really pissed me off.
A year later, they are both trying to deal with the loss of a loved one. The boy lashes out and tells his mother he wished she had been in the building and died and she agreed. Ungrateful little bastard.
This boy goes through his father's things looking for a way to feel closer to him as they did all sorts of games and scavenger hunts while he was living. He finds a vase and accidentally breaks it, which reveals a key with the word Black written on it.
The boy methodically meets all people with the last name Black in the New York area and tries to find out what the key does and what his father was trying to tell him.
It turns out, a man named William had sold the vase to the boy's father and the father had no idea the key was inside the vase at all.
The boy is upset that he's been chasing around a meaningless key that had nothing to do with his dead father.
He goes to a swing set in the park where he used to spend time with his dad. His father had told him at the beginning of the film how he had swung there often when he was alone and how much he enjoyed it. The boy, assumingly due to his disease, is afraid of swings, bridges, and other things, but finally gets on it and realizes it's fun. He turns the swing over and finds a note from his father telling him how proud he is of him.
His mother is going through the boy's things and sees a scrapbook he's made of all the people he met and of his father. At the beginning of the film, they show a man falling through air, I'm assuming they are trying to give the impression the father jumped as he was on the 105th floor. At the end of the film the mother sees the boy has made a pop book and shows a picture of the WTC buildings with a man falling up into the building instead of down and dying. Both references made are that the father jumps, but why would the voice mail that the father left earlier in the film, end when the buildings collapsed while he was talking if he jumped? (The boy was home when the last call came in and he didn't answer the phone, so he's watching the tv and seeing the building collapse as his father's voice stops and the call ends. It's pretty obvious what happened to the audience.) Inconsistencies I can accept in SOME movies, but this one begins and ends with a huge mistake. You either make the father die by jumping, or he dies when the building collapses but don't make yourself look foolish by making such a huge error in a major motion picture.
The end.
To tell the truth, I hated the kid from the beginning and the 9-11 plot device really pissed me off so I couldn't watch the film for longer than a few minutes at the time. So I just fast forwarded through most of it and stopped when it looked like something was important.
Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock were good as usual, but this boy was really annoying and I didn't care about his character at all. The movie was mostly boring and incredibly slow paced. They should've titled the film, Extremely Boring and Incredibly Slow Paced.
Wayyyyyyy too long, wayyyyyy too annoying child actor, and nothing worth watching. I can only assume it got nominated for an Oscar or 2 because it had some reference to 9-11.
SKIP this one please.
1 out of 5 for Bullock, Hanks, and some minor special effects. What a complete waste of time!!!!!
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