Stephen Daldry has been nominated for three Best Director Academy Awards for the first three films he has ever directed: Billy Elliot, The Hours and The Reader. His fourth directorial effort, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, unfortunately will break that streak.

It’s not that it is a bad film or badly acted, it’s just that I didn’t feel emotionally invested in the film, which is about a boy named Oskar Schell (newcomer Thomas Horn) who believes he was sent on a quest by his father (Tom Hanks) to discover which item or door a particular key opens. You see Oskar discovers this key in a blue vase that he breaks one year after his father perishes in the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center.

Part of his journey involves a single clue written on the envelope where the key was found and that is Black so Oskar searches for and meets all the Blacks in New York City. Aiding him in his search is his grandmother’s mysterious new renter (Max Von Sydow). He undertakes this journey unbeknowst of his mother (Sandra Bullock).

While I was watching this film, I kinda of didn’t care that Oskar would find the eventual home of this key. I just don’t know why. There were moments in the film that I cried especially during the scenes where we see what it was like for the Schell family during 9/11 not knowing and wondering where is the father. I did cry a little as you hear the messages that the father left on the family answering machine. But I really think this has less to do with the film than with the emotional nature of 9/11 (I mean I cried at the 9/11 Memorial).

There is a slight twist in this film that I saw coming from a mile away but I won’t spoil it here.

And while Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock are billed first in this film, it is really Horn who is the real star of the film. I think he captured a child’s grief over losing a parent quite well. But during his quest, I felt he was borderline annoying.

Hanks and Bullock are fine as his parents and I think that Bullock pulled off grief very well and the understanding parent as she watched her child grieve.

I felt that Viola Davis was a bit wasted as one of the Black’s that Oskar encounters but she did well in  the scenes she was in.

I wanted to cry more during this film and really wanted to love it but just couldn’t.