Oliver Stone's Version of 9/11: Reductionism Attempt to Make it Personal

Rating: 5/10 (10 March 2007)

Oliver Stone has always been a director of grit, one who was unafraid to take on controversial subjects and create powerful films that opened the audience's eyes to the mire below the surface. In WORLD TRADE CENTER he seems to have taken the opposite stance: take an historic tragedy that affected the entire world and reduce it sown to the entrapment of two Port Authority Police Officers in the rubble of the midline of the two towers destruction in hopes that the event might become more intimate. He manages to just the opposite - he makes a huge horrific tragedy seem like a family crisis and despite casting some fine actors in the roles of actual people, the film falls short of communicating the bigger picture.
The film starts well enough with two of the policemen rising early in the Am to go to routine duty, then the unrecognizable 'bump' sound occurs and quite to everyone's disbelief the events of that terrible day unfold in a manner that does indeed convey the complete surprise of a nation of people unfamiliar with terror happening on home ground. The Port Authority Police enter the impending collapse of the towers to save victims only to become quickly trapped in the rubble, reducing their ranks to two men who hold on for survival that finally comes.
Nicholas Cage is the sergeant John McLoughlin who is trapped with Will Jimeno (Michael Peña) while John's wife Donna (Maria Bello) and Will's pregnant wife Allison (Maggie Gyllenhaal) cope with the news of the day and the discovery that their husbands are trapped in the rubble. The long movie is a back and forth interplay between the trapped men and the terror of the families. Where Stone drops his credibility is in focusing on a retired Marine Staff Sergeant Dave Karnes (Michael Shannon) who upon hearing of the disaster gets a marine haircut and travels to the spot looking for survivors at night, eventually discovering John and Will and getting help for them to be rescued. That is all well and good, but the film adds the tag line 'We'll avenge the terrorists who did this' that seems like a credo for the irresponsible governmental attack on Iraq. It just takes away the film's energy and makes it a political PR piece. And that is too bad: the other film UNITED 93 is a far superior work in depicting the personal aspect of a national tragedy. Grady Harp