World Trade Center reviews

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dws1982
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Post by dws1982 »

A frustrating movie. Back about ten years ago, I watched Nixon. I knew the name Oliver Stone, and I knew that he was the director of the movie, but when I watched JFK about six months later, something clicked with me: it was clear by watching both movies, or by watching just watching individual scenes from both movies even, that they were made by the same guy. It was the first time I ever understood that movies are directed.

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.]
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Post by Mister Tee »

I found the film pretty completely undistinguished. It's not it was BAD -- it for the most part stayed short of the aggressive cloyingness the trailer seemed to promise. But as drama it was fairly flat, more or less at the level of a TV movie. I think United 93, whatever its limitations, stands head and shoulders above it.

My biggest problem was, the central story just isn't that interesting or compelling. Two seemingly nice guys are trapped beneath rubble and then finally rescued. The only thing that makes this more than a minor event is the fact that it happens on an important date in an important place. But for me, that worked against the film. Literature and film are filled with stories that take place against the backdrop of larger events: From Here to Eternity an obvious example. But in that and other cases, the characters and their personal dramas are compelling well beyond their mere proximity to a big event. In World Trade Center, though, the cops -- and their wives -- are drawn as generically as possible, the better to deify their ordinary Americanness. (One of the weirdest things about Hollywood is, people go there to have more meaningful/exciting lives than their hometowns can offer -- then they spend their time on projects exalting what they managed to escape) It was of course dramatically pleasing to find out the guys were okay at the end, but no more meaningful than hearing that Barbaro is going to survive, after all. Meantime, in the background, we see occasional reports from the front -- Brokaw or Aaron Brown documenting the events of the day -- and I kept thinking, THAT'S what I want to hear about. These two guys, however nice they are, are blocking my view.

The main actors are okay, but I don't think they have alot to do. People are saying Cage is more restrained than usual, but what he mostly is is near-comatose. The ladies I've admired in other circumstances, but didn't much respond to, here, simply because their characters are so bland. (I agree with BJ, that Karnes is by far the most intriguing character on the scene; a movie about him might have been more compelling)

And I think Stone has always been fairly poor at directing incidental performers. Think of the Lincoln Memorial protestors in Nixon, and many of the amateur witnesses in JFK. It's his poor direction of these people that gives Stone his "sledgehammer" reputation, as he has actors "indicate" rather than act naturally. Specifically: right from the start, that guy on the subway who starts the conversation about Jeter...I could just about feel him hitting his mark and waiting for "Cut". (And, okay, this is parochial, but any real Yankee fan that morning wouldn't have made some generic remark about Jeter's swing; he'd have been buzzing about Mussina's foiled 8 2/3 inning perfect game on Sunday night. A small detail, but the difference between felt life and plastic replication) And the reaction in the PA office to the planes hitting the Towers was precisely the phony, overcooked response that United 93 so flawlessly avoided (of course including the one prescient cop who knows all in an instant -- the same way some characters in WWII propaganda films understood Hitler's agenda from 1932 on).

There were also a few bad minor decisions, notably Jesus of the Bottled Water - which might have worked as a joke if Jimeno had simply laughlngly recounted it. The fact that it was visualized not once but twice brought a My Cousin Vinny reaction from me -- "You were serious about that?". I also thought the Olivia/Elissa bit might have been acceptable given half the attention...but each time it was repeated, it became more distinctly Hollywood crapola.

I haven't seen much this summer, and liked little, but I'm astonished that people like Dave Poland and Sasha at OscarWatch are promoting this for best picture. Not in a million years.
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Post by The Original BJ »

The best thing I can say about World Trade Center is that it is undeniably moving without being over-sentimental in the least. Conservatives certainly will latch on to it, but I see no reason why a film that celebrates the heroism that did occur on 9/11 should belong only to the right.

And yet, like United 93, only moreso because this is a MUCH more conventional film, I felt like World Trade Center ultimately lacks any type of compelling slant or argument that would bring something new to our thoughts and feelings about this crisis. I've read many pieces about how Oliver Stone has thankfully made an apolitical film, and for the life of me I cannot understand how this is a good thing. It's like saying, thank god, Oliver Stone didn't actually have a POINT to make with this film! Why would we want THAT?! It's not that I want conspiracy theories or anything, but . . . I just felt like the film was rather hollow.

I found the sequences with Cage and Peña trapped in the wreckage rather slow. It must be incredibly difficult to portray this type of endless waiting without slightly boring the audience, and yet, these scenes are still somewhat tedious. I found the wives' subplots much more compelling, and most fascinating of all, the subplot about the marine. I thought the film handled this character in a very interesting manner; he's certainly a hero, and yet the film doesn't avoid questioning his rather maniacal motivations.

Although no actor truly stands out, I think the cast is strong. Maggie Gyllenhaal and Maria Bello are excellent, as always, although I found the latter's blue contact lenses distracting throughout. (How's that for nitpicking?) Cage and Peña mostly lie around in rubble, but they're solid. (Although a scene with Peña's young daughter running into his arms brought back frightening memories of some invisible cloak action.)

Comparisons to United 93 are inevitable. I prefer that film to World Trade Center, but feel that neither attempt to truly analyze the events of September 11 in as fascinating a way as any one of the shorts in 11"9'01. I think what I'd like to see next is a 9/11 film with a little more guts, one that attempts to deal with the complexities of this international event by going beyond mere "depiction," however moving and admirable those depictions of simple heroism may be.
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Post by Big Magilla »

The reviews of Mick LaSalle in the San Francisco Chronicle and J. Hoberman in the Village Voice, both of which are accessible through the imdb, are more in keeping with my thoughts about the film. With all due respect to the two survivors and their families depicted in the film, there are far more compelling tales of that day that could have been told. As LaSalle says, once the guys are trapped you could be watching a mine disaster film. As Hoberman says, it can be construed as very much a film for the political right - George W. Bush appears to be the first respondor, a former marine pops out of nowhere to say "God made a curtain with the smoke to shield us from what we're not yet ready to see," and proceeds to find the two guys and then goes on to re-join the marines and serve two tours in Iraq. And yet Oliver Stone has made a very compelling film when it sticks to the basic events.

I have never been as aware of sound as I was while watching this film. The deafening roars that come when the three towers collapse (yes, there were three), is truly horrific. The film deserves Oscar consideration for sound, sound efects, visual effects, art direction and set design, editing and cinematography. It could also win nods for Stone and Best Picture depending on how the rest of the year pans out. Screenplay and acting honors seem a stretch. Nicolas Cage and Michael Pena are fine in the leads, but don't get to do much but lie beneath the rubble waiting for someone to rescue them. Jay Hernandez has it worse. He has to lie there as a corpse, but does get to go out in a blaze of glory in the film's only extended death scene. Maria Bello and Maggie Gyllenhaal do what they can with their wives who wait roles and other well known actors pop in and out of the picture though there is no one as ditracting as John Wayne appearing as the Centurian in The Greatest Story Ever Told. Stephen Dorff, Viola Davis, Danny Nucci, Frank Whaley, Nicolas Turturro and Julie Adams are not quite at that level. ***1/2.
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Post by anonymous1980 »

Nick Schager likes it:

*** out of ****

World Trade Center
Cast: Nicolas Cage, Michael Peña, Maria Bello, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Jay Hernandez, Michael Shannon, Frank Whaley and Stephen Dorff
Directed by: Oliver Stone
Screenplay by: Andrea Berloff
Distributor: Paramount Pictures
Runtime: 125 min
Rating: PG-13
Year: 2006


World Trade Center begins with a sunrise montage of police officers waking and preparing for the forthcoming day, director Oliver Stone alternating between images of early morning routines and the iconic, immense Manhattan edifices (the George Washington Bridge, downtown's skyscrapers, the Statue of Liberty) that surround New Yorkers as they head to work. It's a warm, quiet sequence that subtly links the metropolis's imposing structures to its denizens as equal components comprising the very bone and tissue of the city, with Stone visualizing the means by which these giant creations of glass and steel gently cradle those who walk the streets below. It's a small but vital point about man's relationship to his environment that's central to this second cinematic confrontation of 9/11—which recounts two Port Authority Police Officers' struggles to survive being trapped underneath the collapsed towers' rubble—since it gets at the highly personal nature of the attacks against the WTC. As Stone effectively elucidates in this beautifully understated intro, the towers were not simply giant buildings but an intrinsic part of New Yorkers themselves. And thus it's heartbreakingly fitting that when the filmmaker eventually cuts to a close-up of the debilitated but still-standing Tower One, the fiery, smoking hole created by the crashed plane resembles nothing so much as a vicious, gaping wound.

Such subtle artistry permeates World Trade Center, as conspiratorial firebrand Stone—reigned in either by his sobering subject matter, the failure of Alexander, or both—approaches the material with a restrained straightforwardness tinged with inventive inspiration. Unlike Paul Greengrass's speculative cinema verité project United 93, his is a film cast in a traditional Hollywood mold—the disaster rescue picture—and crafted with all the big-budget gloss, production values, and melodramatic sweep befitting a prestigious production. For large segments, Stone is content to operate with professional efficiency, respectfully muting his own voluble presence in favor of the terrifying true-life ordeals suffered by Sgt. John McLoughlin (Nicolas Cage) and officer Will Jimeno (Crash's Michael Peña), both of whom bravely chose to rush into the towers and found themselves buried beneath a mountain of debris, unable to move and forced to engage in heartfelt and trivial chitchat about their families and G.I. Jane, respectively, in order to keep themselves awake and, thus, alive. There's a sturdy workmanship to the director's mise-en-scène that brings clarity to the hectic proceedings, the narrative's flip-flopping between the plight of the pinned cops and that of their wives, children, and loved ones handled with sentimental grace, and its intermittent flashbacks/dream sequences never overplayed to the point of becoming unduly mawkish or manipulative.

Still, sparks of Stone's unique creativity shine through: a match-fade between a rescue agent's flashlight and the burning sun in Will's vision of Christ; the blurry shots from John's increasingly dire perspective; and a gorgeous resurrection image that likens the two officers' cavernous prison to a grave. Stone slyly sneaks virtuoso moments into his story, bringing a modest elegance to a script that frequently feels creakily old-fashioned. If those instances are too few to truly elevate World Trade Center above its modest conception as a heartwarming tale of courage, altruism, and humanity's capacity for multicultural unity, they also prevent it from succumbing to cheap, exploitative corniness. And though the film's view of 9/11 is, at times, narrow to the point of being blind—both Stone's refusal to show the hijacked planes (only their shadows appear) and his decision to recreate the towers' collapse from an inside-the-lobby outlook creating the impression that what's occurred isn't a deliberate, lethal terrorist attack but, instead, simply a natural disaster—the director chronicles his particular historical episode with tasteful aplomb, in the process eliciting genuine, nuanced performances from Cage and Peña (despite being immobile and drenched in dust and shadows), as well as Maria Bello and Maggie Gyllenhaal as the wives left to manage households while awaiting word on their husbands' (and, by extension, their own) fates.

Largely focusing on John and Will's predicament, the film tries to remain apolitical, the larger context surrounding the day's catastrophe mainly delivered via TV news footage and the off-screen pronouncements of anchormen ("This is war," Tom Brokaw ominously intones). Yet even so, the crafty Stone manages to charge his material with subtext, from the preponderance of religious symbolism (a Church's altar crucifix, a cross hanging above Gyllenhaal's front door), to foreshadowing hints of the calls for retaliation to come, such as in scenes of cops angrily cursing the "bastards" responsible for the unfolding horrors. Nowhere is Stone's politicization more pronounced, however, than in Michael Shannon's Staff Sergeant Dave Karnes, a Pentecostal ex-Marine who, inspired by W.'s televised speech, ditches his Connecticut office for Ground Zero, where he sets about searching for survivors and, fortuitously, comes to locate John and Will. At once a true-believer "nutjob" cut from an unpleasantly zealous, militaristic cloth, and yet the story's nominal hero whose unblinking selflessness is its thematic core, Karnes is a fascinating study in love-him-and-hate-him ambiguity. He's also, ultimately, the paradox that defines World Trade Center, the character's contradictions echoing the small and large-scale confusion that typified 9/11, the film's attempt to ring inspiration from an event defined by tragedy, and, finally, the stewardship of Stone himself, a filmmaker deftly balancing director-for-hire genre responsibilities with his own distinctive auteurist impulses.

Nick Schager
© slant magazine, 2006.
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Post by Mister Tee »

Hollywood Reporter; seeing the same thing but liking it more.

I have to say I don't find the second paragraph terribly coherent.


World Trade Center


By Kirk Honeycutt
Bottom line: A heartfelt tribute to those who lived and died at the twin towers.


Oliver Stone moves dramatically away from his recent dazzling but often self-conscious if not self-congratulatory filmmaking to direct "World Trade Center" in a somber, focused and straightforward manner that serves the material extraordinarily well. This is, of course, the account of two Port Authority cops who survived the collapse of the World Trade Center's twin towers on Sept. 11 and were dug from the rubble 24 hours later. These roles are played by a movie star, Nicolas Cage, in one of his most meticulous performances, and young Michael Pena, a charismatic star-in-the-making.

This is a film of terrific selectivity. By focusing on two of the few who did survive the collapse, the film achieves emotional power and an uplifting ending. To focus anywhere else would probably result in a virtually unwatchable, gut-wrenching film. Thus, "WTC" could provide a mass catharsis for American audiences much as "United 93" did for those who saw that earlier film.

In choosing to throw images on the nation's screen of one of our darkest hours, the film lets people sort out their feelings about the horror, tragedy, heroism and sacrifice experienced in the name of freedom. "WTC" aims to speak to our collective emotions about the historical event we suffered as a people.

And in choosing to tell the fact-based story of Sgt. John McLoughlin (Cage), a 21-year veteran of the Port Authority Police Department, and Colombian immigrant Will Jimeno (Pena), who graduated from the police academy that January, Stone, writer Andrea Berloff and the producers choose to view that day's events as one of survival for America as a nation. We received a staggering body blow but found the moral, spiritual and mental courage to carry on.

You can't make up a story such as the one lived by these two men, even down to such absurd details as a service revolver belonging to one buried cop that suddenly goes off, discharging round after round until it's empty.

In the early moments of the attack, McLoughlin, who knows every inch of the twin towers, commandeers a city bus to race his men downtown to do whatever they can to rescue as many people as possible. Under his breath though, he admits, "There is no plan." In all the emergency scenarios, no one imagined such as attack.

When the first building collapses, McLoughlin directs his guys to race for a service elevator, the building's strongest point. After terrifying blasts, collapsing ceilings and showers of lethal debris, the rescuers are reduced to three. Will and Dominick Pezzulo (Jay Hernandez) occupy a level above John, who lies pinned on a lower section. The only one able to move is Dominick, who stays with his buddies to try to free them.

The second collapse injures Dominick badly. In an ambiguous scene, possibly owning to the fact none of the survivors saw what actually happened, Dominick takes his gun and fires upward, dying moments later. This leaves Will and John, who cannot see each other, in semi-darkness, stifling, dust-choked air and continual explosions. They struggle to talk, to keep one another from drifting into sleep and certain death. Will has visions of his wife and Jesus, while John recalls his past with his wife. The two find the will to survive, not so much for themselves as for their families.

In one breathtaking camera trick, Stone pulls back and up from 20 feet below the heap of concrete and metal to the smoky outdoors, then above Manhattan and finally above Earth, where communication satellites relay news of the tragedy to distant corners of the planet. Thus, he signals that the film will tell the story of what happened over the next day from below and above ground.

The wives are tough cookies. Donna McLoughlin (Maria Bello) fights to keep her family calm as fear threatens to tear them apart. A pregnant Allison Jimeno (Maggie Gyllenhaal) nearly succumbs to her emotions as anger, anxiety and nausea fight to take control of her body.

Then there is the improbable story of ex-Marine Dave Karnes (Michael Shannon), a deeply religious man, who dons his old uniform and makes his way to Ground Zero, where he and another mysterious Marine actually locate the two men. This triggers a massive rescue effort headed by emergency officers Scott Strauss (Stephen Dorff) and Paddy McGee (Stoney Westmoreland) and paramedic Chuck Sereika (Frank Whaley).

In his active moments, Cage plays McLoughlin as a weary man of action. Natural instincts and years of service carry him into battle. He clearly believes in his mission and his career but perhaps not with the passion of Pena's rookie, who cannot believe his luck that he is a cop. When the two men cling to life and to each other, the acting is all with the voice and eyes. Each hits every psychological beat with a beautiful sense of the situation and his character -- Cage, barely conscious, questioning everything about himself, and Pena, almost perversely upbeat, willing himself to survive.

The filmmakers do acknowledge the thousands who did not return and torment suffered by their families in a highly charged hospital scene between a distraught mother (Viola Davis) and Donna, who initially direct their anger at confused officials who can't give them enough information. They then collapse into each other's arms.

Behind the camera, Stone oversees a crew at the top of their game: Jan Roelfs' harshly realistic set represents the dark, smoky space beneath the collapsed building. Seamus McGarvey's clear camera angles let you know where everyone is in the darkened nightmare. And Craig Armstrong's somber music never overplays its hand.
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Post by Mister Tee »

And more of the same, from ScreenDaily

John Hazelton in Los Angeles 01 August 2006 05:00

Dir: Oliver Stone. US. 2006. 125mins.

In World Trade Center, Hollywood's first really major movie about the events of September 11, 2001, Oliver Stone mostly steers clear of politics, religion and other potentially controversial issues. Instead, the usually provocative film-maker focuses on the true and more personal story of two cops trapped in the rubble of the Twin Towers while their families wait in agonising limbo for news. Showing uncharacteristic restraint behind the camera, Stone crafts an uplifting tale out of the heroism of the cops and their rescuers. Yet as moving as the story often is, World Trade Center sometimes gets dangerously close to melodrama. And its impact is lessened by an overly reverential attitude towards its protagonists.

Audiences are likely to be divided over the appropriateness and effectiveness of this risky Paramount production, with the most favourable reactions probably coming from middle-of-the-road US moviegoers.

Paramount opens the film wide in the domestic market on August 9 and, with Nicolas Cage providing star power, surpassing the $31.5m domestic take achieved by United 93 (last April's smaller, grittier and starless 9/11 film from Universal) shouldn't take long. If the inspirational tone does indeed strike a chord with the mainstream US audience - Paramount reportedly has hopes that even teenagers will connect with the PG-13 release - the film could then go on to at least recoup its $63m budget.

The international marketplace - in which UIP will start the rollout in late September - will be a much bigger challenge, despite of Cage's presence and Stone's reputation. Though the film doesn't indulge in any explicit flag-waving, its distinctly US sensibility could be a real drawback in some regions of the world.

Sergeant John McLoughlin and officer Will Jimeno, uniform cops with New York's Port Authority Police Department, were two of only 20 people pulled out of the ruins of the World Trade Center alive. In her first produced script, screenwriter Andrea Berloff introduces the two men (played, respectively, by Cage and Peña) leaving their homes early on the morning of the fateful day and then volunteering, with several other cops, to help out in the fast developing World Trade Center emergency.

The attacks on the towers are not seen directly (other than as part of TV news coverage), but the film, partly shot in New York, skilfully recreates some of the frightening scenes around the Center, as dazed and dust-shrouded New Yorkers try to escape the site through a spooky rain of debris from the Towers' upper floors.

Only 20 minutes or so into the action the policemen are caught in the basement of the Center when the first tower collapses. Soon, only McLoughlin and Jimeno are left alive, both pinned down by concrete and steel and severely injured (the hellish rubble pile was recreated by Stone's Alexander production designer Jan Roelfs on a set in California).

From then on until the rescue the film basically cuts between scenes of the two men struggling to hang on to life and scenes of their families in the suburbs struggling to cope with uncertainty, with occasional flashbacks to happier times.

The scenes in the rubble start out with a painful intensity but gradually lose their edge, in spite of strong performances from Cage and Peña (who was last seen in Crash). In the flashbacks, both men appear as attentive and loving fathers and husbands with only the most forgivable of flaws. The portrayals may well be true to life, but more conflict and shading in the characters might have given the film more dramatic grist.

The family scenes are more interesting and they produce good performances from Bello (A History of Violence) and Gyllenhaal (Secretary) as the wives of the trapped men.

Recognition of the wider significance of the day's events is fleeting. A short montage sequence soon after the attacks take place shows the reactions of horrified TV viewers around the world and President George W Bush appears briefly in another TV news snippet. But unlike United 93, World Trade Center has no terrorist (or even explicitly Islamic) characters.

When the film does seem to touch on broader issues it does so in oddly oblique ways. One strand of the story follows the real-life character of ex-Marine Dave Karnes (Shannon), who, sitting in his local church gazing at the cross, feels he has been called by God to help out at Ground Zero. Slipping through security barriers to search the site, Karnes hears the cries of McLoughlin and Jimeno and alerts the rescue team. The next day, he calls his accountancy office to say that he may not be in for a while, citing the need for "some good men to avenge this." The real Karnes, we are told in the closing credits, re-enlisted and served with the US military in Iraq.
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Post by Mister Tee »

From Variety.

I can't say I'm favorably disposed toward this film, both from the trailer and from what I read here and elsewhere. It appears Stone has essentially made an Apollo 13-ish film: focusing on trapped guys who get rescued. If others were not ready to see a bare-bones-facts rendition of September 11th (a la United 93), I'm not interested in seeing it banalized into a movie of the week, complete with special effects and uplifting ending. What was it Kubrick said about Schindler's List? -- that the Holocaust was about 6 million Jews who were killed, but Spielberg's film was about a couple hundred who survived. I like Schindler, for reasons apart from that, but I have the same feeling/doubt about World Trade Center...and of course that day is a far more immediate memory.

World Trade Center


A Paramount release of a Michael Shamberg/Stacey Sher/Moritz Borman production. Produced by Shamberg, Sher, Borman, Debra Hill. Executive producers, Donald J. Lee Jr., Norm Golightly. Co-producer, Chantal Feghali. Directed by Oliver Stone. Screenplay, Andrea Berloff, based on the true life events of John & Donna McLoughlin and William & Allison Jimeno.

John McLoughlin - Nicolas Cage
Will Jimeno - Michael Pena
Allison Jimeno - Maggie Gyllenhaal
Donna McLoughlin - Maria Bello
Scott Strauss - Stephen Dorff
Dominick Pezzulo - Jay Hernandez
Dave Karnes - Michael Shannon

By BRIAN LOWRY

Nicolas Cage stars in Oliver Stone's 9/11 drama, 'World Trade Center.'


Attempting to convey a macro vision of Sept. 11 through a micro lens, Oliver Stone is to be credited for presenting this challenging, fact-based story with admirable restraint, a quality that has not always characterized his past directorial efforts. Yet these events -- which require no dramatic embellishment -- by their nature result in a claustrophobic film, as two port authority cops lie buried in rubble struggling to survive. As such, "World Trade Center" yields lovely and touching moments but proves a slow-going, arduous movie experience, if more uplifting than Universal's earlier test of that historic day's box office potential, "United 93."
With the upcoming five-year anniversary of the towers' fall as a somewhat arbitrary milestone, Paramount's task to sell another movie steeped in 9/11 lore remains a formidable one. That's largely because those harrowing images were shared initially through the prism of television and have been explored effectively and extensively within that medium, from Jules and Gedeon Naudet's CBS documentary "9/11" -- which most closely mirrors elements here -- to the various dramatizations related to United 93 and other aspects of the story.

Stone's film bears some thematic resemblance to "Alive," Frank Marshall's 1993 chronicle of a plane crash in the Andes. Both offer a tribute to human endurance under unimaginable conditions, but watching young guys huddle together trying not to freeze to death or two cops pinned under tons of debris isn't exactly a cinematic thrill ride.

The first produced screenplay from Andrea Berloff, "World Trade Center" begins with a quiet, powerful sense of foreboding, as the characters go about what will be anything but another mundane Tuesday.

Sergeant John McLoughlin (Nicolas Cage) drives through the early morning twilight to his job at the New York Port Authority, where there's a "Hill Street Blues"-type briefing before chaos erupts over news that a plane has struck the World Trade Center. McLoughlin and a busload of officers, including Will Jimeno (Michael Pena), rush to the scene with scant sense of what's happening.

"There's no plan" for an evacuation of this magnitude, the taciturn McLoughlin says in his rough accent, as he prepares his team to ascend into the building, which creaks ominously. Then, suddenly, the world comes crashing down around them, belching out a huge cloud of dust that leaves McLoughlin and Jimeno trapped dozens of feet below ground, desperately trying to maintain consciousness -- convinced, somehow, that succumbing to pain and exhaustion by falling sleep will mean certain death.

So far, so good, but it's at this point that the movie perhaps inevitably bogs down. Largely eschewing flashbacks (some are used sparingly), Stone alternates between the imperiled cops, McLoughlin's wife Donna (Maria Bello), and Jimeno's very pregnant spouse Allison (Maggie Gyllenhaal), who waits nervously with her extended family for word regarding her husband.

A fourth thread -- and surely the most interesting -- centers on Dave Karnes (Michael Shannon), a spit-and-polish former Marine who, improbably, dons his dress uniform and drives from Connecticut directly to Ground Zero, where he wades through desolation that resembles the nightmare vision of "The Terminator," searching for survivors.

Beyond this core, Stone has populated his film with terrific actors in even minor parts, from the various cops to Viola Davis as a worried mother with a missing son to Donna Murphy as one of Donna's friends. The fact remains, though, that long stretches are shot in tight close-up on John and more personable Will lying immersed in gray muck, seeking to stay alive. While both actors deliver strong performances, they are confined by the narrative figuratively as well as literally, spurring a degree of impatience for the climax.

For Paramount, the saving grace could be that many who venture into the theater will do so with at best cursory knowledge of the story's resolution, unlike the grim certainty of "United 93," which yielded modest returns despite considerable advance coverage and praise. Yet both this and the Universal film ultimately present an inspiring vision of can-do American spirit amid adversity, exemplified by Karnes and the rescue workers (played by, among others, Stephen Dorff and Frank Whaley) risking life and limb to assist complete strangers.

Technically, Stone's production is a work of superior craftsmanship, highlighted by astonishing sound quality, which captures the towers' destruction with a staggering din as the buildings give way. Craig Armstrong also delivers an appropriately sensitive score.
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