What Happened?

Rating: 6/10 (14 September 2006)

I mean...man...Oliver Stone. That's right, the genius behind Platoon, The Doors, Natural Born Killers, JFK, Born On the Fourth of July, Midnight Express, and Scarface, the "Emperor of Excess," who got to where he is with his fearless edge. World Trade Center has no edge. If I'd not known it was directed by Stone, I would've actually said something like, "Stone would be aggravated if he saw this." Maybe he is, but the difference is that it actually is directed by him. Its problem is that it has the spirit of your average corny patriotic fluff. The dialogue, the characters, the plot itself, the slow-motion shots of melodrama...they're all on par with the work of some studio director-for-hire.
The film starts off very well. It begins with the quiet atmosphere of early morning in New York City. It has a growing suspense. There's an effectively disturbing minimalist depiction of the attack on the Towers. After that, the movie takes the Pearl Harbor route and inflates with stale dialogue and token worried-wives-sitting-at-home characters and aggravating clichés such as those. yes, it's a true story, but the fluffy treatment of it is what takes it down.
Perhaps Stone just wanted a surefire way to bring himself back up to the top after his long absence punctuated by the box office disaster of the underrated Alexander. A movie about 9/11 is both controversial and intriguing enough, and with his name attached, everyone knows they're in for a slashing perspective, but for whatever reason, he took the safest route through the story. Maybe he had to, because JFK and Platoon were made decades after Kennedy's assassination and the Vietnam War. Perhaps not enough time has passed for the masses to really be ready for such a harsh blunt-eye view of the September 11 attacks. I know I am, though.
Hopefully Stone will get back on track. He's been off of it for way too long.