Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

EXTREMELY LOUD & INCREDIBLY CLOSE:
Oskar Schell (played by Thomas Horn) and his father Thomas (played by Tom Hanks) are the best of friends. The two spend time together by going on wild scavenger hunts around New York City. Each day the two create new worlds and new adventures that makes Oskar face a world that he’s afraid of but when the World Trade Center was destroyed Oskar lost his father. Devastated by lose of his father, Oskar seems to be losing his way and not knowing what he should do. After finding a key in his fathers closet that he believes was put there for a purpose, Oskar begins the most important hunt of his life, his fathers last mission for him.

OSKAR ON THE SEARCH:
Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close’s plot is about a young boy who has lost his father during 9/11 and now must cope with the reality of having lost his father. Being that the boy might have Asperger Syndrome, the world was hard enough to cope with when he had his father there to help him face his fears. It was with the use of treasure hunts around the city that Oskar was able to get out of his safe apartment and into the world he feared by forcing him to talk to strangers and go into scary areas. With the death of his father the boy becomes closed off as well as more afraid of the world he lives in. Finding an unknown key that he believes was part of another scavenger hunt that his father had set up for him. Going on the hunt to figure out what the key unlocked has Oskar finding and meeting people that would change his life in ways that he never figured a key would allow.

This was a touching movie but also an annoying movie. My main and pretty much the only problem I have with this movie is the pacing. It’s way too slow, taking way too much time showing events that could have been cut out and no real use in the progression. Not that I would want it to have events happen faster but the movie should have been shorter by a half hour. Being 2 hours long there are moments that are just happening where it had me wondering exactly why it was being shown. It felt like director Stephen Daldry was trying to show how much the character Oskar was hurting while also dealing with the possibility of having Aspergers by doing it over and over and over again. Though I know that in real life this progression would be similar it was not working well for me on film. I knew the boy was sad, it was shown he was depressed at the death of his father, and his fear of the world was given at the start of the movie so having it continually shown where it was just taking up time got a little annoying.

Aside from the movie taking a little too much time to finally getting to the point at the end of the movie, I did enjoy watching it. Thomas Horn does a unbelievable job in his performance as Oskar. This is a role that had to be really tough to play because of all the emotion that had to be shown but he did a great job. And though Tom Hanks is only in a few scenes and for a short time he did a good job in showing why this father was so important to his son. And getting even less time was Sandra Bullock who plays the mother Linda Schell who has to cope with the death of her husband and having a son who is pulling away from her as well as not being able to connect with him. Actually, everyone plays a good role in this movie and in fact the meeting of these people are the most interesting parts of the movie for me. With it’s sad but yet hopeful meaning of Oskar going on his fathers last adventure it was the ending that gives the most impact on the movie. It’s a movie that I actually enjoyed even though it’s plot of sadness and loss is one that I tend to not care much for.

LOUD & CLOSE ON BLU RAY:
The movie looks nice on Blu Ray with a good picture quality that featured no grain that I could see. Though I wasn’t too impressed with the audio levels, I had to turn my set up to about 18, which for most Blu Ray’s I have the levels down between 7 and 13, making the audio levels low. Still it’s said a picture is a thousand words and when you have a movie picture that makes it like millions of words and Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close has a nice picture quality. With some impressive cinematography added with the quality being put out with the Blu Ray, the movies looks really sharp. There’s not many special features, I did like the making of, but there wasn’t much included beyond that one feature that was interesting.