Boring, Long and wants to be "Ladder 49"

Rating: 3/10 (28 August 2006)

The first thing to say about this movie is that it is long and boring. The theater was pretty much filled when I saw it yesterday and after the first 20 minutes everyone in the theater seemed to be starting sidebars. This movie is slow slow slow! Everyone was clearly bored and just waiting for this train wreck of a movie to end. Next off, the effects are nothing to brag about. Simple modeling. I have an idea, if you want to know what happened on September 11, 2001, download the newscasts and videos and watch them. You can see the real police and firefighters in truly heroic positions. There is really no defining the characters, they are simply two dimensional images of firefighters and police officers. This director couldn't even take the time to show something interesting in their lives, they clearly lived completely boring lives. The reason we know this is because this film wants so badly to be "Ladder 49" that the playoff is EXACTLY the same. First Responders (in this case a couple of port authority cops) trapped under the rubble, waiting for rescue with flashbacks of their apparently excessively boring lives. The children of these cops are also really boring, or rather the actors portraying them are. The kids cant act, but then again neither can the adult actors. Fact of the matter is that Nicolas Cage is no Tom Hanks. Cage needs dialogue and with the limited dialogue in this feature simply comes across as a mannequin. In fact they could have put one of those animatronic mannequins in a fire suit and probably had a better result. (Now that I think about it, they might HAVE done it). Cage and all the other actors are emotionless in what is supposed to be an very emotional movie. They are not. The movie is not. This movie is a big budget remake of Ladder 49, only without the acting, emotion, plot, story, effects, excitement, and anything else that makes a decent movie. I recommend watching the videos of the newscasts of what really happened, not this disaster of a movie. In lieu of this thing and along the same lines, for something better, rent "Ladder 49".