The Kite Runner (2007)
Khalid Abdalla, Zekeria Ebrahimi, Ahmad Khan Mahmidzada

Occasionally, a good book becomes a better movie. That's the case with The Kite Runner, a book that for me fell a flat in the 2nd half—then became downright ham-fisted in the final 3rd. But somehow the film renders these sections with a great deal more skill and nuance. In fact the entire movie is a gorgeous re-creation.

Two young boys, bound like brothers, play together in the hills and streets of Kabul, Afghanistan. Amir betrays Hassan, the son of his father's servant, and soon after flees with is father to America at the onset of the Russian invasion. Years later, Amir marries and publishes a book. A call from an old family friend, with a plea to Amir that "there is a way to become good again," pulls Amir back to Kabul to make amends to his friend Hassan.

What I particularly liked about the movie is how it handled the move to America, especially its treatment of Amir's father, who attains a tragic, albeit diminished, dignity lacking in the book. And Amir's return to Pakistan and Afghanistan reaches a level of realism, power and elegance, while the same section in the novel feels contrived and over-the-top, especially when Amir meets his nemisis.

But To give the book its much deserved due— the first third achieves a near fable-like quality, evocative of a timeless paradise as the two boys gambol in the mountains and gardens ringing Kabul. That somehow wasn't captured by the film.