World Trade Center Review
by [email protected] (dnb AT dca DOT net)August 26th, 2006
WORLD TRADE CENTER
A film review by David N. Butterworth
Copyright 2006 David N. Butterworth
**1/2 (out of ****)
Strip away its 9/11 backdrop and Oliver Stone's "World Trade Center" is little more than a primetime domestic potboiler in which two Port Authority policemen get stuck in the rubble of a fallen building while their families anxiously await news of their fate.
It's the second film this year to offer an "authentic" recreation of the events of September 11th (following "United 93"). Clearly Hollywood has decided that, after five years, the American public is now ready to revisit its country's darkest hour in dramatized living color!
Impressively, Stone's film does not exploit its tragic context. In fact, for its first 40 or so minutes it harrowingly recreates the moments leading up to the collapse of the twin towers with carefully crafted precision. These sequences, more evocative than graphic, are genuinely chilling; you might well get shivers, as I did, watching the events unfold--the towers themselves eerily superimposed atop various Manhattan skylines; an image of the first plane shadowing a downtown billboard; office documents raining down from the skies like confetti.
With hindsight we are only more aware of the inevitable horrors about to befall these regular, everyday Americans, whether it be the office workers trapped in the doomed skyscrapers themselves or the cops, firefighters, and medical personnel intent on saving them. What makes the film's opening especially unnerving is the fact that we are so very aware of the enormity of the tragedy that is about to play out-- we don't need to be reminded, via an opening statement, that the film is inspired by true events.
Nicolas Cage plays one of New York's finest, a 21-year veteran on the force with a graying moustache to prove it, and Michael Peņa plays another, the rookie. The end credits inform us that only 20 people were pulled from the wreckage of the World Trade Center and that John McLoughlin (Cage) and Will Jimeno (Peņa) were numbers 18 and 19. Yes, they were--are--real people, now retired from active duty.
Politically, World Trade Center feels more like a Ron Howard film than an Oliver Stone one and perhaps that's just as well. It's about the people--the power of the human spirit--not the planes. It's a story about courage, not carnage, about hope and survival. A gung-ho marine, who (thankfully) goes where others have been told not to tread, utters an off-handed remark about revenge but otherwise the flag waving is kept to a minimum.
After tower #2 crumples, unbeknownst to McLoughlin and Jimeno, of course, who are trapped some 20 feet underground in an elevator shaft after the destruction of the first ("the safest place to be during a building collapse"), the film alternates between scenes of the two men (well, the two men's dirt and debris-covered faces) struggling to stay alive and sequences of the men's wives, a pregnant Allison Jimeno (Maggie Gyllenhaal) and Donna McLoughlin's mother of four (Maria Bello), both at home in New Jersey and likewise struggling with the growing realization that their husbands might never be coming home.
None of what plays out is particularly original or nuanced or thought provoking but the setting somehow makes it feel that way. While that's a big plus for the film's producers the rest of us may feel uneasily shortchanged by "World Trade Center"'s heroic intent.
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David N. Butterworth
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Originally posted in the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup. Copyright belongs to original author unless otherwise stated. We take no responsibilities nor do we endorse the contents of this review.
