DVD review: An 'Extremely' timid take on 9/11 grief
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Grade: C
DVD •The overwhelming grief of the 9/11 attacks is diminished in "Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close," director Stephen Daldry's too-precious adaptation of Jonathan Safran Foer's novel.
Nine-year-old Oskar (Thomas Horn) is trying to make sense of the death of his father (Tom Hanks, miscast as a Russian-Jewish jeweler) in the World Trade Center, taking a key Dad left behind and searching New York City to find the lock into which it fits. Performances by Sandra Bullock (as Oskar's mom) and Max Von Sydow (as a mute tenant of his grandmother's apartment) do little to raise Daldry's cloying handling of a story that treats the unique events of 9/11 as a garden-variety tragedy.
Sean P. Means