REEL CRITIC:

“The Kite Runner,” if not compared to its book, could be compared favorably to any great movie. Go ahead, pick a film you love. Everything is in this one. Theme. Symbols. Acting. Directing. Screenwriting. And, of course, the book by Khaled Hosseini that it will be compared to. Often unfairly.

Movies and books are made of different stuff. Movies are visual. Unless a narrator is used (an intrusive device to say the least), everything that is told must be seen or heard through natural-sounding dialogue. The director can’t put us inside the heads of characters the way an author can. Actors do the best they can to show the audience their moods, but when it gets right down to it, we are guessing.

That makes it hard for cast and crew of “The Kite Runner.” Protagonist Amir, played by Khalid Abdalla, is perennially depressed because his father has not accepted him. That has led him to some disastrous lapses of judgment as a child. Without access to what he thinks, he appears dour, a little difficult to love and to understand. Abdalla pulls off a difficult job, partially with his sheer good looks, partially because his motivation is written well, partially — and luckily so — because it is difficult to stifle charisma.

To screenwriter David Benioff fell the task of converting an entire novel in which there are comparatively few constraints to a screenplay.

That process necessitates the exclusion of story lines, entire scenes and more.

I am awed by what he left out and how well the film works without such details as young Omar’s (Amir’s childhood friend) harelip and Amir’s near-death experience after he is beaten by the Talib who had shown a proclivity for violence when they were youngsters living in a pre-Communist and affluent Afghan community. Those of us who admire Hosseini’s novel may wish for these lapses, but their absence makes for a more cohesive story line in film.

I also liked that director Marc Forster used restraint in portraying the violence in this book. It’s not that brutality in this film isn’t graphic. It is. Where it needs to be.

But scenes that might have been milked for effect to the detriment of taste — like the stoning of a Muslim woman — were minimized. Others, like the rape of Omar by boys who would grow up to be Taliban thugs, are made clear but only suggested.

This film is sure to soar high and live long. It has personal drama set against great political movements. Think “War and Peace.” It has themes as pertinent to the world at large as they are to the individual. Think tolerance. Think Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird” and Leo Tolstoy’s “Anna Karenina.”

Here is a movie that works. It works without big-name stars. It works even though its Afghan scenes had to be faked in China. It works with a director who isn’t a household name but should be. It works because of the book it is based on and in spite of the fact that people will compare the two.

?CAROLYN HOWARD-JOHNSON is a Glendale resident who writes fiction and poetry about intolerance, peace and war. She blogs on those subjects at www.warpeacetolerance. blogspot.com. ?CAROLYN HOWARD-JOHNSON is a Glendale resident who writes fiction and poetry about intolerance, peace and war. She blogs on those subjects at www.warpeacetolerance. blogspot.com.