'Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close' review

Drama. Starring Thomas Horn, Sandra Bullock and Tom Hanks. Directed by Stephen Daldry. (PG-13. 129 minutes. At Bay Area theaters.)

It's a far better thing to remember "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close" than to watch it. Looking back, much of what is irritating, precious and tiresome about the movie recedes and drops away, while all the movie's virtues, which are considerable, rise to consciousness. There are good things here - just be prepared to blast for them.

Based on the novel by Jonathan Safran Foer, "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close" is a 9/11 story told from a unique point of view. It is not about the drama of that dark day, although drama is so attached to that event that it can't help but give a slight lift to the movie. Rather, it's about the aftermath of trauma, what people have to live with and get over, and all the things they can never get over. It deals with something important but intrinsically boring, people going through life in a low-grade fever of grief, loss and sadness.

The great innovation of the story is that the tragedy doesn't happen to a generic set of characters, who are meant to stand in for all the victims, but to people who are quite specific. Oskar (Thomas Horn) is a studious 9-year-old who either has Asperger's syndrome or is just outside that category. But his great luck is that his father (Tom Hanks) is tuned in to the workings of his mind. Dad comes up with games and adventures designed to appeal to Oskar's methodical nature, while forcing him to socialize.

But this father is killed on 9/11 because he happened to have a breakfast meeting at Windows on the World that day. Hanks' voice on the answering machine - calm, at first, then increasingly agitated - is haunting, and it's a wise choice on the part of director Stephen Daldry that we never see Hanks in that building, so that we feel some of the helplessness and detachment that the boy experiences.

This is all very potent, even mythic, and the movie has another great asset in Sandra Bullock as the mother, who is so true and emotionally attuned that there can never be a second of doubting her panic or grief or the cloud of despair the character must push through in order to be a mother and keep going. Through her, we understand the character's appreciation of her son's specialness but also the effort it takes to get on his wavelength. For her husband, the connection was natural. For her, it's more work.

So with all this going for it, how is it possible that "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close" should remain, at best, a break-even proposition? The difficulty is mainly with the story, which despite all the emotion hovering around it, remains thin and uninvolving. Young Oskar finds a key among his father's possessions and, in his very organized way, goes off into the big city to find the lock that the key opens.

This is problematic in two ways: (1) Though Oskar thinks the key will bring him closer to his dead father, the audience never believes that for a moment, so, in essence, the plot is devoted to a search that doesn't concern the audience; and (2) It forces the movie into a lateral structure - that is, the story can't really go forward. Most of the time, it's just going sideways, with the boy going from one address to another, working off of tiny clues, in search of answers.

Moreover, the kid - not the young actor, but the character he plays - is creepy. We understand why he's creepy, as well as weird, snappish and superior; we understand why he is suffering, and if we could help him we would. But none of this really makes it a pleasure to spend time in his company. In some of his later exploits, he is joined by a mysterious old man (Max von Sydow), which seems promising, until we realize that the old man is unable to speak. That means the kid talks even more.

So it's one long slog with one obnoxious kid. That's what "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close" offers us - a lousy experience, and yet a good memory. Only you can decide if one is worth the other.

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