Film Review: The Kite Runner

Liverpool Daily Post

The Kite Runner (12A, 122 mins)
Starring: Khalid Abdalla, Atossa Leoni, Shaun Toub, Sayed Jafar Masihullah Gharibzada, Zekeria Ebrahimi, Ahmad Khan,  Mahmidzada, Mir Mahmood Shah Hashimi, Homayoun Ershadi, Ali Danish Bakhty Ari  
Directed by: Marc Forster

MARC FORSTER'S magnificent adaptation of Khaled Hosseini's best-seller has been making the headlines for all of the wrong reasons.

Shot on location in the western Chinese desert bordering Afghanistan with child non-actors, and predominantly in the Dari language (one of the two main tongues), The Kite Runner includes a shocking act of violence perpetrated against one of the young characters.

Although pivotal to the narrative, the assault is but a small part of a haunting and deeply moving tale of redemption, which casts a heady spell as it travels back and forth in time, between the streets of Kabul and San Francisco Bay.

Amir (Ebrahimi) and servant boy Hassan (Mahmoodzada) are best friends in pre-civil war Afghanistan, oblivious to the power struggle that is about to engulf their country.

A fearful act of betrayal during a kitefighting contest taints the lads' innocence and destroys their friendship forever, propelling Amir and Hassan on divergent paths.

Twenty years later, Amir (Abdalla) ventures back to wartorn Kabul to rescue Hassan's son Sohrab (Bakhty Ari) from an orphanage. The Kite Runner is a beautiful and stirring distillation of Hosseini's book.