Disaster day

Rating: 5/10 (23 May 2014)

On September 11th Port Authority police officers John McLoughlin and Will Jimeno are sent to the WTC when the first plane crashes. As they try to evacuate people, the Towers collapse and McLoughlin and Jimeno are trapped in the debris whilst their fellow officers are killed instantly or die soon after.
I expected World Trade Center to be a rescue film as heroic policemen or more accurately Nicolas Cage goes and try to rescue people from the rubble. Not that they themselves are trapped in the rubble with most of the film taking place in the dark as the rest of the film deals in emotional turmoil of their families cross cutting with the trapped policemen in peril with salvation arriving in the form of a religious, zany and rather on the edge Marine who speaks in slogans. We are told at the end of the film that the marine later did two tours of duty in Iraq (a country which by the way had nothing to do with 9/11 but I am sure the way the character is presented in this film gleefully took vengeance on the Iraqi people!)
The films is based on a true story and not a tale I knew about as I came to this film with little knowledge of the plot. Oliver Stone is more restrained in his directing style (keep the camera moving is his motto!) and the film does present challenges for Stone.
This ranges from his left wing views that is tempered here, to being respectful to the 9/11 events and this true story of the rescue but also the technical challenge of re-enacting the disaster. Obviously they have created a CGI Twin Towers in the establishing shots of New York and then used archive footage of the aftermath of the incident and the Towers with the plot of the film although not successfully integrated.
The film conveys the confusion that occurred on that day but pacing is a problem especially when the police team are literally walking to the disaster area and of course when they are later trapped it is then just two guys talking to keep each other going which of course makes the story drag but its also devoid of tension.