In Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, director Stephen Daldry makes it his job to get the audience to feel, to weep, to cry. He does his job very well.
Too well, in fact. At times his film, based on Jonathan Safran Foer's novel about a family shattered by 9/11, seems to exist only to tug at the audience's heartstrings. It's manipulative as all get out, playing up the outstanding performance by newcomer Thomas Horn for maximum emotional payoff. Luckily Horn is so good -- as is Max von Sydow in a wordless role -- that the film resonates in spite of the tear-jerking strings Daldry pulls.
Nine-year-old Oskar Schell (Horn) is a curious, precocious and socially awkward boy living in New York City. (He might also have Asperger's syndrome; he says the test results were inconclusive.) Oskar is especially close to his father, Thomas (Tom Hanks), a jeweler who concocts elaborate puzzles and expeditions for Oskar to force him to interact with people, something he's not very good at.
Then one September day Oskar is sent home early from school after something happens (the students aren't told exactly what). Linda (Sandra Bullock),Oskar's mother, is at work, and Thomas is at a meeting. Oskar arrives at his empty apartment to find a series of answering-machine messages left by his father, who it turns out is trapped inside one of the Twin Towers. The date is Sept. 11, 2001.
A year later Oskar, living with his mother, with whom his relationship is strained, worries he's losing his memories and links to his father. He discovers a key inside an envelope that says only "Black" on the outside. Oskar decides it is one last expedition planned by his father, and sets out to find out from all of the Blacks in Manhattan -- there are hundreds -- if they know what the key fits.
Thus begins Oskar's odyssey, walking all over the five boroughs (one of his fears is public transportation), showing up on the doorstep of everyone named Black. He packs for his trip as he might a hiking trip, and carries along a tambourine, which he shakes to calm his nerves. His first stop is the home of a couple literally in the middle of a breakup (Viola Davis and Jeffrey Wright). It's awkward, of course, but there is something about Oskar and his story that charms most (though not all) of the people he visits.