Movie Review on “The Kite Runner”

Critical Movie Review on “The Kite Runner”

Introduction

The Kite Runner is basically an adoption of a best seller novel by the same name written by Khaled Hosseini. The novel “The Kite Runner”, published by Riverhead Books, in the year 2003 also received tremendous appreciation by readers throughout the world. This was the first ever writing piece by Hosseini (Grossman, 2004). The book in the year 2004 received the South African Boeke Prize. According to Nielsen BookScan the novel also holds the achievement of being the first best seller of year 2005 in the United States of America. Voted as the Reading Group Book of the Year in the year 2006 and 2007, it was also headed in a list of 60 titles submitted to the Penguin/Orange Reading Group prize by entrants (Pauli, 2007).

The book therefore is the original source that helped the film makers to make a film that focuses on the social, religious and environmental controversies in the politically and economically unstable state of Afghanistan. Moreover, the fusion of explaining the harsh realities of the region with the emotional, heart-melting story of different characters is the common factor in both the novel and the movie (Hosseini, 2004). There was a major turn out in the Cinema for the film and it received positive reviews in general. The most famous movie critiques, the Rotten Tomatoes gave the movie a 66% rating, based on 165 reviews (www.rottentomatoes.com).

Discussion

Case Description

Amir's Life's Events

Amir is undoubtedly the central character of the movie. Therefore, film includes several flashbacks and flash forwards and covers the events and happenings of Amir's life. The surrounding events have also been highlighted in the film and their impact on Amir's life is also portrayed very smartly. Moreover, because of the fact that Amir is an Afghanistan citizen, events and occurrences in Afghanistan and their effects upon Amir's life in the years of 1078-1979, the year 1988 and the year 2000 is also shown. The cities shown in these eras are San Francisco, Fremont (California) and Kabul (Afghanistan).

The film begins with the events that explains Amir Qadiri, a famous Afghan-American writer and his wife Soraya living in San Francisco when Amir receives a letter from his father's old friend Rahim Khan.

The film then shifts to a flashback mode and describes the events of the years 1978 and 1979. The film shows Amir, a young timid story writer, as a son of a wealthy and influential man commonly known as “Baba Sahib”. A hazara family works at Amir's household including a father and a Son, named Ali and Hassan. Hazaras are generally known to be criticized by the other Afghani communities of that time. However, both Amir and his father pay no attention to such trends. In fact, Amir is friends with Hassan as Hassan solves most of Amir's problems. Hassan and Amir enjoy playing the Kite Running sport together, a sport very common in those times in Afghanistan (Sadat, 2007). Hassan while playing the sport would ...