Unfortunately, very little of that signature style is on display here. It packs an emotional punch more than it probably should (is it revealing too much to say that I was nearly in tears at the end?), and one or two spots seemed like traditional Oliver Stone (one right after the plane hit), but for the most part this is indifferently directed, as if his heart wasn't fully in it. I don't know if the Alexander debacle (which wasn't as bad as the critics said) humbled him, making him feel like he needs to reign in his style in order to save his career. But some of the critics of the film were right that it feels like a TV movie. I'm not saying he should have made a conspiracy oriented movie (no major studio would've bankrolled it anyway), but he could've effectively channeled his style into 9/11 film, still setting it at Ground Zero, still involving the rescue efforts even.
It's awfully undramatic--the men are stuck under the rubble, while the wives do those quirky things to cope with the stress; Maggie Gyllenhaal gets out of the car and starts walking home when the light takes too long to change. The movie recovers some when they start trying to dig the guys out of the rubble, and that made me think that maybe the movie should've been about the rescue workers, rather than the ones who were rescued. (Or, as Tee and others have mentioned, a movie about Karnes might have been more interesting.) Even though this sequence doesn't exactly feel like signature Stone, it's actually dramatic, it features probably the best performance in the movie (Stephen Dorff surprisingly, with Michael Shannon not far behind), and Stone seems to be actually engaged here.
I've referenced him earlier this week, but once again Theo Panayides sums up my feelings about this one pretty well:
WORLD TRADE CENTER (42) (dir., Oliver Stone) Nicolas Cage, Michael Pena, Maria Bello, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Michael Shannon [Nicely-made and everything, and I'm sure much of the early 9/11 minutiae must be heartbreaking for New Yorkers - the reminder of the actual shops (Crabtree & Evelyn!) in the Concourse level of the WTC, or that panoramic wide-shot of the NYC skyline at dawn with the Twin Towers snugly in their proper place - but then it turns into POSEIDON or one of those "Trapped: The Story of Bunny McDuffy" movies, with the wounded men struggling to stay alive ("My mouth feels like a beach") while their families freak out and wring their hands, and even the final-act hallucinations (Jesus and the wife) are unworthy of the peyote-freak who made THE DOORS and ALEXANDER. Such a dull little movie on such a momentous event, it's tempting to think Stone must've intended it as metaphor - America itself trapped beneath the rubble, hoping for some kind of rescue - and it's worth noting (just like in UNITED 93) that the only person who realises straight away that "This country is at war" turns out to be the closest thing to a saviour - except in this one (unlike UNITED 93) he's also an obvious psycho, suggesting that desperate times call for desperate men or the War on Terror is a psychotic delusion, according to taste. When the nut in question (an ex-Marine) heads off to re-enlist at the end, because "they're going to need some good men to take revenge for this", you wonder if this is the same Oliver Stone who experienced war first-hand, and even made a pretty good movie about how easily good intentions spiral into mass psychosis.]