All drama, no conspiracy

Rating: 9/10 (13 August 2006)

During World War II, there were many movies purporting to tell the story of what happened at Anzio or on Normandy beach. But what you ended up getting were a few fictional characters dropped in the middle of this or that battle.
And now we have Oliver Stone's "World Trade Center", which focuses on two real-life heroes of the 9/11 tragedy.
After the conspiracy-laden "JFK", I keep expecting Stone to have an agenda behind all his films. When I heard that he had done a film about 9/11, I wondered what kind of film it would be. How much conspiracy theory or jingoism would be injected in with the drama? What I saw on the screen was a very human drama. Two Port Authority cops go in to the WTC to help free the trapped victims only to be trapped themselves.
The action switches back and forth between the trapped cops and their families. I appreciated this because it would otherwise have left me hopelessly claustrophobic. The family scenes also helped to round out the characters of the two heroes. The tension is also eased by a few instances of humor (Not jokes) which broke the tension a little.
Any politics in the film are kept to a minimum. Despite it's subject matter, this is not a political movie. This is a story about survival and hope. I recommend it highly.