This seems to be really one of those cases of you'll either love this movie or completely, totally hate it. I personally really wasn't expecting much from this movie and knew very little about it as well but I was completely surprised and wowed by it. It's a really warm, heartfelt movie, filled with both adventure and drama.

Things could had so easily turned cheap and sappy in this movie but it really didn't. Instead the movie at all times felt like a real warm and honest one, with some great storytelling in it and no, I'm normally absolutely not a fan of Stephen Daldry's movies and directing approach. What I absolutely loved about this movie is that it's being told almost entirely from the eyes of a child, who has lost his father and is trying to cope with it by going on, what he thinks, is the one last adventure through the city of New York, that his father had planned for him.

Really, over the years we have had many adventure movies of course but how many of them successfully combined it with some true heartfelt drama in it as well. On that level this movie is already really an unique and original one, that works on so many different levels.

It seems that the only reason why some people have some major problems with this movie and are even offended by it is because its drama involves 9/11 and uses its events to emote its audience. And of course while they have a point about this, I didn't feel at all as if it was using it in a cheap or gimmicky way, to easily get emotions from its audience. The only one thing I will complain about was that it kept referencing a bit too much at it at times. Really, one mention of it could had sufficed but the movie instead kept using some flashbacks at times, which were still powerful but it got done 2 or 3 times too many in my opinion. Besides, there were times I even got confused by it and didn't always intermediately noticed that it was a flashback I was watching.

I was absolutely loving all of the characters in this movie and also really liked it that the movie had the guts to portray a little kid as a little kid for a change and not one with some fake emotions, feelings and thoughts. Everybody was a kid once, some much longer ago than others but I do believe everybody should be able to identify in one way or another with its main character, played by the young Thomas Horn, who made his acting debut with this movie. But the same more or less goes for all of the other characters as well, who got very well written and got played by some well known and great actors. This movie probably features both Tom Hanks' and Sandra Bullock's best performance of the past years and Max von Sydow, who never says a word in this movie, even got nominated for an Oscar for his role in this movie.

Really, this is one of the best 2011 movies I have seen and it also definitely ranks among my favorite ones as well.

8/10

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Thomas Schell (Tom Hanks) loves to get his son Oskar (Thomas Horn) to explore. He's bratty and reserved. Then Thomas dies in 9-11. His mother Linda (Sandra Bullock) is depressed. Oskar finds a mysterious key with the word Black on the envelope. He goes on a quest to find where the key fits and maybe extend his connection to his lost father.

It's an interesting premise even though it uses the often referenced 9-11 as its touchstone. I should like this but I just couldn't connect with it. I have to conclude that I couldn't connect with the bratty kid. He's angry, bitter, and strange. That's before the death of the father. I think it would work better if he was happy and outgoing before the tragedy. Then he could have a compelling change of character. Eventually, his character just tired me out and so did the pervasive melancholy.

Although Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock get their moments in, Hanks via flashback, this film is really about young Thomas Horn and his search to find some meaning in his father's death in the World Trade Center. I have to confess that burying an empty coffin which is what Sandra Bullock does to obtain closure was a bit extreme. A nice memorial service would have done for most people.

Young Mr. Horn is a wonder with a distinguished supporting cast supporting him in his movie Extremely Loud&Incredibly Close. We've only seen him in one other film. Has he gone into other pursuits?

As father and son Hanks and Horn play beautifully against each other. They have a great relationship mostly because Hanks treats Horn like an adult. They spend a lot of time with each other, it's almost like Bullock is frozen out. It's like summer catch every day with them except these are intellectual games between a smart father who went to MIT but went into the jewelry trade to support a family and a most precocious son.

When Hanks is killed in the World Trade Center attack on 9/11 it is young Horn who can't get over it. The rest of the story is how he works out his grief process through the hunt for the lock that a key he finds in a vase that his father purchased and has only the word 'Black' written on the envelope where the key was. The rest of the film is the strange odyssey through the streets of New York and the mathematical precision in the search that Horn works out.

He's aided and abetted for a while by Max Von Sydow who got a best support actor nomination playing the catatonic man who Horn realizes is his grandfather. How he figures it out is something to see, but he's one smart and observant kid.

Some have asked what the message is. Two messages, fecal matter happens in life without any rhyme or reason to it. Something we all have to recognize. The second is much harder, just that life moves on and when we lose a loved one or anything else bad happens just take it in stride and move on. A harder message to realize for an incredibly bright juvenile who tries to find meaning in it all.

Years ago I knew a young adult who really never grew out of his childhood because childhood was denied him. He and his sister were taken from their parents by Child Welfare and raised in a group home. He could never get over that until the day he died of AIDS. All he ever wanted was something that was denied him, a home and family. He never learned to move on the way Thomas Horn has to.

Extremely Loud&Incredibly Close also got an Oscar nomination for Best Picture in 2011 but lost to the artist. It's a worthwhile film if for nothing else the wonderful relationship between Tom Hanks and Thomas Horn.