"Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close"

Adaptation, Drama. Rated PG-13. 2 hours, 9 minutes.

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On September 11, 2001, Oskar Schell (played by Thomas Horn) comes home from school early and hears the phone ring. He is scared to pick it up. His father, played by Tom Hanks, who was in the World Trade Center, left six messages on the machine telling him everything was gonna be all right. But it wasn't. We all know the story.

Distraught over his father's death, the nine-year-old Oskar finds a key in his father's closet while going into his room for the first time in a year. He is convinced that this father left him a final message hidden in the city in one of the five boroughs of New York. On the envelope along with the key is written the word "Black."

So he searches through phone books and finds all the people with the last name Black within the city. Being the methodical person that he is, he divides the names by borough. He, then, scours the neighborhoods in search of someone who knew his dad in some way and what the key opens up to. He thinks that finding the truth will bring him closer to his dad.

Sandra Bullock, plays his grieving mother Linda, whom Oskar doesn't get along with. However, she tries to figure out what he is up to. He tells her lie after lie.

Oskar does talk to his grandmother who lives in the apartment in the next building. His grandmother has a renter (played by Max Von Sydow) who cannot speak and is mysterious in his own way. His new friend joins the boy into helping scour the neighborhoods.

It is a movie about one boy's search for life's answers. For closure. However, there were so many questions unanswered in this movie. Then the credits started rolling.

The movie lasted two hours and nine minutes. The director was Stephen Daldry and it was written by Eric Roth.

OVERALL RATING: C

Photo credit: Warner Bros. Pictures

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close movie poster