carefully crafted emotional wallop

Rating: 7/10 (28 August 2006)

Of course they are going to make it out alive. Or there wouldn't be a movie. There's no "survivor story" without the survivors after all, right? Still, somehow Stone manages to pile the dramatic weight on so thick that we are inevitably swept up in the officers' struggle for survival. It goes against the grain of most hero stories, because McLaughlin and Jiminez don't really "do" much in the active sense. They can't move, so their main heroic deed is garnering the will power to survive.
Profiling the marine story sort of telegraphs the rescue a bit early, but this is permissible. I mean it's a miracle of narrative agility that this material was able to lend itself to a taut, conventional two-hour movie anyway. I mean everything "looks" real, but the dialogue is more schematic than realistic.
The home-front stuff is a bit stiff dramatically, but I guess there really isn't much you can do with it. The performances are sincere, which makes up for the abyss of real emotion in these scenes. It isn't "THE" movie about the trade center towers collapsing it's just one story of the internal fight for survival and one that only scratches the psychological surface at that.
But I liked it? Yeah. The story's essential struggle was so deftly handled that I found its emotional pull irresistible. All in all, this was a fitting tribute to the bold heroism of New York's finest martyrs on that day.