Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

This is a review post about extremely Loud and incredibly close DVD. all words and opinions are my own and may not be copied without my permission. I was sent a copy of this DVD for the purposes of my review.

When I first saw the trailer for Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close it was one of those films I immediately put on my mental “to watch” list. Up until now, I have managed to not watch any films which vaguely relate to that fateful day Sept 11th.

There was something about this DVD which piqued my interest. Perhaps it was the cast with Sandra Bullock and Tom Hanks, two of my favourites or perhaps it was that it was a story told from a child’s point of view.

Personally I like films which keep moving quickly, I don’t like to feel that I am sitting around waiting for something to happen because then I could be off doing something else. At the very beginning of the film that is a little how I felt with this one but just as I was about to hit the stop button, it pulled me in and grabbed my interest.

“Adapted from the acclaimed bestseller by Jonathan Safran Foer, “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” is a story that unfolds from inside the young mind of Oskar Schell, an inventive eleven-year-old New Yorker whose discovery of a key in his deceased father’s belongings sets him off on an urgent search across the city for the lock it will open.

A year after his father died in the World Trade Center on what Oskar calls “The Worst Day,” he is determined to keep his vital connection to the man who playfully cajoled him into confronting his wildest fears. Now, as Oskar crosses the five New York boroughs in quest of the missing lock – encountering an eclectic assortment of people who are each survivor in their own way – he begins to uncover unseen links to the father he misses, to the mother who seems so far away from him and to the whole noisy, dangerous, discombobulating world around him.”

There is something about Oskar (Thomas Horn) which pulls on your heartstrings as a Mother, he is an ‘odd’ boy who is trying to come to terms with the loss of his father and watching him as he goes on his journey with “The Renter” is at times heartbreaking, funny and frustrating.

At the same time, you feel compassion for his mother played by Sandra Bullock as she struggles to reach out to Oskar and help him, instead, she stands back (yet not too far) and allows him to handle his grief in the only way he knows how. By the end of the film I really wanted to reach out and hug them both, I did cry (which I don’t generally at films, I’m quite a toughie really) and I did wonder how many other “Oskars” out there had felt the same emotional trauma after that fateful day.

Films which contain a real-life element are always so much more compounding on your emotions. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is a film which will take you through every emotion you ever dreamed possible and then some but you will need to watch it when you can truly give it the concentration it deserves.