"Can't keep running awaaaaay" (c) The Pharcyde

"The Kite Runner" by Khaled Hosseini is one of the most amazing books I have read in recent time. But when I heard they were making it into a movie I was a little skeptical because it isn't the easy story to digest at all. And then of course there is the controversy regarding the situations the young actors were placed in (I do believe that the kids and their parents should have been told the entire story, so that they new exactly what was going to happen before filming ever started). Even with my issues regarding the movie, I decided to check it out.

Overall, it is a decent movie. It isn't great and it isn't horrible - it is simply an easy digestable straight adaptation of the book. The interpretations of Amir, Hassan, Baba and Rahim Khan are good for this version. The truth is that no movie can ever really capture an entire book. The screen writer has to squeeze hundreds of pages into 2 hours, which is not easy. The best way to describe "The Kite Runner" would be "alluding." The movie alludes to various aspects of the book without showing or discussing them in detail (but it is done in such a way so that you don't have to have read the book to watch the movie). That is my biggest issue with the movie. The details in the book are what made it interesting to me. The internal conflict that Amir deals with through out the book are not fully explored in the movie. And his journey back to Kabul doesn't evoke the same emotion as it does in the book. Now I know this would have made it into a 6 hour movie, but I think that these parts of the story are most important. And I felt they rushed Sohrab's story at the end.

This movie is a great introduction to the book. It gives a nice summary of the book minus the roughest parts of the story. I would suggest everyone watch the movie and then read the book to get all of the real details of the story. I am happy that a studio was at least willing to take a chance on this story. 3/5