dapted from Khaled Hosseini’s hugely popular novel, The Kite Runner tells the story of an affluent Afghani boy, his childhood friend, an act of violence, a tacit betrayal, and a dangerous quest for redemption. Along the way, governments fall, a country is abandoned and returned to, fortunes disappear, social standing evaporates, familial skeletons emerge, and, naturally, kites fly and running ensues. Directed by Marc Forster (Monster’s Ball, Stranger than Fiction) with a screenplay by David Benioff (Troy, 25th Hour), the film begins promisingly before squandering its potential on a bloated plotline and a hurried finale.

An epic, globetrotting tome distilled into 122 minutes of celluloid storytelling must omit certain elements. Unfortunately, this film fails to trim the fat in the appropriate places. Three films rolled into one, The Kite Runner begins as a story of childhood friendship and disloyalty, morphs briefly into a tale of recent immigrant strife and triumph, and concludes as an action thriller with a hit of redemption, a shot of socio-political commentary, and the abridged version of a love story. Attempting to stay faithful to the novel, it covers a lot of territory, but little of it thoroughly.

The compelling first act, rife with pathos, brims with dramatic potential. Forster paints a vivid portrait of 1970s Kabul, a city overflowing with vigour and verve but inherently clouded by impending strife. Amidst the chaos, two young boys from different social stratospheres, Amir and Hassan – played ingenuously by Zekeria Ebrahimi and Ahmad Khan Mahmidzada respectively – read stories, watch films, and fend off self-loathing, bigoted bullies. Eventually, an act of violence creates a rift that separates them, both geographically and emotionally; to this point, the film is taut and gripping.

However, the new-world love story, culture clash, and medical mini-drama that form the bridge between 1970s mistakes and contemporary deliverance mute the carefully cultivated earlier tension, shifting focus substantially and subsequently killing pace and deflating the too-brief latter-third’s effectiveness. Even when it involves a passage through a war zone, redemption in twenty minutes feels slight under the weight of 100 minutes/two decades of justly accumulated guilt. With comparatively little time devoted to it, the grown-up Amir’s (played reservedly by Khalid Abdalla) redemptive journey back to his homeland plays like an exigent chore rather than the heroic quest that his moral exoneration requires.