- Despite the fact that Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock are top billed, they have maybe 10-15 minutes of screen time each--indeed, I think Max von Sydow and Viola Davis both have more screen time than does Hanks. (Reports are that Bullock had a significant subplot excised which involved James Gandolfini, who was highly billed on early posters, and whose part is entirely left on the cutting room floor.) That means that the movie rises and falls on Thomas Horn, whose sole credit before this was appearing on Kids Week on Jeopardy! The problem is that the character is a bit of a blank slate, though this is less Horn's fault than the source material and screenplay. Particularly given a reveal near the end of the film, I wonder if there wasn't a better movie to be made in which all the narrative weight didn't lie on his shoulders, but was shared in parallel with another character (as I understand the book is, mixing Oskar's story with flashbacks that are entirely absent from the film).
- Much of the reaction to the film (particularly the negative reaction) seems to be centered on how 9/11 plays a prominent role in the film. I'm wondering if a better movie could have been made by excising 9/11 entirely from it--have Hanks' character die in a random act of violence rather than one fraught with such emotion. Admittedly, this requires some rejiggering of plot elements, but less than you might think, and might have allowed both the filmmakers and the audience to focus on a small portrait of grief rather than trying to create a large and universal one.
There are some moments in the film that really work (particularly a couple of scenes between Bullock and Horn and von Sydow's wordless, but world-weary, performance), but on the whole, I found it an interesting example of a film that tries too hard to say everything, and, as a result, winds up saying pretty much nothing.
