good if you're looking for a memorial of heroism and courage, though short of really affecting

Rating: 5/10 (11 August 2006)

Maybe part of my reaction to Oliver Stone's latest directorial effort, World Trade Center, is not totally the film's fault, or maybe it is, I still can't decide. Months ago I saw what I thought was the ultimate take on the pain, horror and bottomless grief that came from 9/11 with United 93, which took a full-on documentary approach with one particular story from that day and without a known cast or really well-known director made an incredibly emotional film. With World Trade Center, this time we get one of the chief directors working today with melodrama and heightened emotions, who more often than not does make it work for his goals. It also has a cast of known Hollywood actors, such as Nicholas Cage (as the star), Maria Bello, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Stephen Dorff, and Jay Hernandez among others. That matched with a story that has no real villains aside from the elements around them (i.e. a mountain of rubble), and given a more old-fashioned approach to the devastation, puts the film at more of a distance for the viewer. This is a respectable, well-made dramatization of the events of these two un-questionably brave policemen. If it isn't better than it could've been, it's because of its ambitions as a simply respecting, and sentimental detailing.
This is not to say that Stone and first-time writer Andrea Berloff don't put up some very effective scenes. It's just that they often have to share time with material that, while probably not far from the truth, are too typical or diverting from what is compelling. For example, the early scenes as the chaos first comes up with the first plane hitting the tower, and the officers going in, is just the right pacing for this set-up material. When officers John McLoughlin (Cage) and Will Jemeno (Michael Pena) are under the rubble, which is very well constructed by Stone's designers for full authenticity, their scenes together are close to touching. Even a moment when Jesus comes into the picture via Stone's use of symbolism isn't lost on me. But it's in the cutting back to the families of the men where I started to feel the disconnect. I understand the purpose of showing the worrying, sorrowful wives and kids in this situation, but it becomes almost like filling up the running time, especially in the most unnecessary scenes of the film in the flashbacks showing both men before the incidents.
This added with Stone's hit or miss tactic of visual melodrama makes the film lesser than it could be. But this is all personal gripes, and what I did expect from the film I did get. There are more than enough scenes that hit the buttons that should be met about the bravery and heroism of those who responded to the towers collapse. And Stone is tactful enough not to go all Michael Bay on us with his style (and, at the least, keep a kind of restraint that seems to be a good rebound after Alexander). He keeps his actors in a state of mind that fits the subject matter, and even in the moments that do border on being in a TV-movie (though in the end a stroke above a TV-movie), they're never un-true to what their characters need to be for the material. World Trade Center is meant to hit the mainstream movie-going audience, unlike the more independent-minded and un-restricted United 93, and for a mass audience it's just the right touch of pathos that's not too soon five years later.