The Kite Runner (2007) is a wonderful story, which is a good thing because the movie has many scenes honouring the appeal of a good story, and it would be enervating if the movie itself was not a well-told tale. A young boy betrays his best friend and, two decades later, gets a chance to redeem himself. The protagonist, like many of the characters is complex, not all good, all bad, all hero, all victim. He spends most of the movie rather weak or unmanly, but the heart-warming conclusion is a testament to his new-found maturity. The story creates a powerful sense of time and place—Afghanistan before the Russian invasion, and Afghanistan under the Taliban. But it also jumps to modern-day California, and this switching from past to present works smoothly, in part because the issues the characters face are the same. For good and bad, immigrants come trailing some powerful stories.