Reviewing Movies

Being a mountainous country it shouldn’t surprise anyone that Afghanistan has been a popular place to engage in kite flying. This is a country that still plays a game on horseback that involves a carrying around a dead goat; a competition that can actually kill people. Therefore I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that kite flying is also an aggressive sport involving cutting your competitor’s kite string with your own.

As the better off of the duo about whom this story is told Amir is not a nice guy. Feeling jealous of the attention paid his friend Hassan, the son of his father’s servant he engineers the circumstance that leads to their departure from his home. Thus when, having escaped to American when the Taliban take over his homeland after the Russian Invasion his return to seek out the offspring of his now deceased childhood friend is as much an exercise in remorse as anything else.

Amir has always been bookish and reclusive; never standing up for himself in anything. His friend Hassan, though nearly half his size has the heart of a lion and fought their joint battles while Amir watched often in hiding. Nothing much changes when he returns to Afghanistan and he is given a beating by the Taliban leader he attempts to confront in seeking the release of his dead friend’s son. Indeed it is that boy who helps engineer their eventual escape.

There are no heroes here, only flawed human beings attempting to make their way through life as best they can despite the obstacles that get thrown in their way. The movie was shot in China and California not the country in which it is set. The most engaging portions of the movie centre on the early relationship between the two boys. The bond that is set there drives the remainder of the film.