Stone Surprises with a No-Frills Film

Rating: 8/10 (4 August 2006)

Warning: This comment review discusses some details of the film that might be considered "spoilers."
Last night I had the chance to view an advance screening of World Trade Center, Oliver Stone's elegy to the brave souls who risked their lives on 9/11 to save innocents.
It's the first straightforward work of film-making we've seen from Stone in years. I had forgotten how much we missed this artist's power to bring us movies that leave theater audiences silent in shared catharthis. I was concerned when I first learned that Stone would be helming this project, and wondered if we'd be faced with some execrable "JFK" clone that used "Loose Change" conspiracy theories to build a paranoid case for the attacks on the Twin Towers as America's Reichstag fire.
Those concerns were unfounded, as it turns out, because Stone chose to honestly tell the story of two Port Authority officers trapped beneath the rubble. His auteur status is justified here: he crafted a restrained, no-frills portrait of two genuine heroes, their families' agony and a nation's shared grief.
Kudos, as well, to screenwriter Andrea Berloff for crafting dialogue and story pacing that keeps an audience rapt with attention for two hours, most of that time spent ping-ponging back and forth between the two talking heads of Officers John McLoughlin and Will Jimeno jammed beneath multiple floors of collapsed rubble.
By simply telling a true human story -- showing us, for example, the gut-level fear and trepidation of the first responders who were nonetheless courageous -- this is a film that shames the most radical elements in our society on both sides of the political spectrum.
It would be nice if Ann Coulter and Colorado professor Ward Churchill, and their respective minions, could be strapped into chairs to watch an endless loop of this film for weeks on end. Coulter and her ilk for flippancy toward 9/11 widows who are critics of the Bush administration. And Churchill for his vile radical chic notions that the innocents killed in the Twin Towers were "little Eichmanns."
If the film has any shortcomings, it would be that Stone chose to be almost too restrained in shielding us from seeing those planes slam into the towers, or from lingering too long on innocents plunging to their deaths. To my mind, our nation and the world need to see those things repeatedly so that we do not forget the genocidal urges of those death-loving fanatics who unleashed terror upon us.
There are many who would prefer to forget.
The film also takes an unfortunate short detour into political correctness, when, for a few moments, we see scenes of people around the world in shock and grief at what they are witnessing on live television. Indeed, much of the world did share our pain. But for whatever reason, Stone chose not to show us one particular group of people who were dancing in the streets in ululating jubilation at the sight of the towers' freefall.
Seeing that one more time might also have reminded some who would prefer to forget the murderous worldview of so many in one forbidding part of the world.
But these are only a few redacted visions from a terrible day. There's plenty of harrowing horror in this movie to remind us of the reasons for our nation's sadness and anger.
And the film makes up for its omissions by not shying away from other moments, such as when Stone portrays characters reaching out to God for guidance: A mother praying her rosary on the kitchen floor, a young man sitting in a chapel, Officer Jimeno seeing a vision of Jesus and finding joyous sustenance from it, Officer McLoughlin saying the Lord's Prayer over the racket of falling debris.
"World Trade Center" also includes the true story of David Karnes, who felt called by God to put on his old Marine uniform and crawl through the rubble of the fallen towers, in the dark, alone, to look for buried victims. If it hadn't been for Karnes' self-imposed mission, McLoughlin and Jimeno would have perished. The film doesn't try to hide Karnes' coiled rage at what the attackers have done, nor does it shield us from his justified desire to avenge America. It merely shows us Karnes as he was.
We can thank Stone and his team of filmmakers for delivering on the promise of movies as art. World Trade Center is a tragic reminder of where we were before 9/11, where we are now, what we face and how far we have to go. And ultimately it's a story that gives us something we all need: a little hope.