Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (2012)

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close is a terrible name for a film, it's a mouthful, it's easy to get confused (incredibly loud and extremely close?!?) and doesn't really say much about the film. The trailer for this film was equally messy, it showed a young boy setting out on a journey of self discovery, touching everyone he meets as they have touched him as he searches for a hidden message from his father who died in the twin tower attacks on 9/11 in 2001. It's not that I have a problem with films about 9/11, some are fantastic, United 93 springs to mind... However, the thing I hate most in films is the over sentimental nature that some have. Some subject matters create their own sentiment, so when you shovel on layers more you end up with something that quite frankly makes me angry.

Take this film. In the foreground you have terrorist attacks and you have the result of those being the death of a father. Then slightly further back you have your main character as someone who almost certainly has autism of some description as he struggles to interact with the people around him. You've got the relationship between a mother and her son getting further apart as the son misses his father so. You've got an estranged grandfather who can't talk because of something he's seen during the Dresden Bombings  coming back to help his grandson, then going away again like he did when his son was a kid. You've got phone messages from the father whilst the towers were being attacked that keep getting played throughout the film. I could go on. All of this is unnecessary; the very fact that his father died in a terrorist attack is surely all the material you need to get emotion from an audience, yet this film feels the need to cram the other events down your throat like it doesn't know what else to do with it.

So I'm sitting in the cinema infuriated by the sheer levels of emotional trickery this film is trying on the audience. I am fully aware that this film is up for an Oscar, so I am slowly learning to hate the Oscars more and more, and then something happens. Max Von Sydow appears. Now whilst the film remained annoying, here was a performance that was interesting. Not uttering a single word in his time on screen, he manages to convey emotion and character in the way that the film as a whole would have benefited from, with subtlety. Also good in the film is Sandra Bullock, an actress who I really like, I think she is both good at the comedy roles and the drama, and I think if she were in better films she'd be one of the biggest stars on the planet.

Bad performances though come from the kid... I know it's all too easy to pick on the kid actors, but this was a pretty high profile film, and this kid was pretty wooden, I feel bad saying it so I won't say much more. Tom Hanks too left me unimpressed, it wasn't so much that his performance was bad... it was more that it felt like it was phoned in, the type of performance that he could do in his sleep.

Come on guys, Mr Hanks, Ms Bullock, you're both great actors, just please... please stop making overly sentimental bollocks like this and make some films with tact and delicacy to their emotion... I know you can do it!