A little disappointing

Rating: 8/10 (12 August 2006)

I went in there with very high expectations because the review in the local newspaper was very positive. I came out a bit disappointed.
Spoilers ahead.....
The movie started great- we all remember that morning, what were we doing when we saw the news. It was nice to see what the people involved were doing that morning- for example McCoghlin getting up at 3:25am to go to work, driving to his office, it being just another day, etc. The men knew nothing about the second tower since they were rushing to the first one. The images were astounding, even though we have seen them hundreds of times by now. The reactions of the people in NYC were shown well. The whole scene was recreated as it happened that morning. The movie really built up to the point where McCoughlin and Jimeno and others in their group got trapped.
It was good to see initially what the families were doing, how did they find out, their worries, etc. However, at some point the movie lost the intensity and got in a rhythm of WTC rubble-Family worries- WTC rubble - Family worries.....and so on. Even though this was the focal point of the movie, I think it would have been better to show what was happening to their other team members whose names McCoughlin called out when they first got trapped. We only saw one of them. They could have shown a subplot around the marine that came to the rescue of these two. While they were trapped, I think it would have helped to divert the attention to other areas of the WTC just to exemplify the horror that had just taken place. Afterall this was a story of many heroes, and not just the two officers and their families. The movie just did not reach the heights I had expected it to reach, although I did shed some tears along the way. I think including some other people in the story would have made the story more interesting from a movie perspective. Otherwise one might as well see a documentary, and there are some very good ones about 9/11/01.
The acting by Nicolas Cage and Michael Pena was good as the two officers. It is challenging for any actor to express with only the face, without moving and without using hands and legs. They did a very believable job of showing what these two officers were going through. I read that the real life characters and their wives were very involved in the making of this movie, so I have to assume all the scenes were based on real life events. In the roles of the wives Maggie Gyllenhaal and Maria Bello were OK. Maggie was more believable than Maria, whom I liked very much in A history of violence but she seemed to be constrained by the role itself in this movie (just one or two emotions). However, the real star of this movie is the art direction. The visuals are great and they create the main impact. The weakness is the story, and I don't mean any disrespect to the heroes of 9/11/01.
I cannot help comparing this experience with United 93. That one had me riveted. At some point in WTC I just wanted it to end. The back and forth between the families and the two men trapped under the rubble somehow got old. IMO the director needed to find a more creative way of showing it to really hit it home.
I still gave it 8 out of 10 because it still is a very powerful experience. It just did not meet my very high expectations.