World Trade Center

Plot synopsis:
On September 11, 2001, Port Authority Police officers John McLoughlin and Will Jimeno are patrolling the Port Authority Bus Terminal in Midtown Manhattan when they see a plane fly dangerously low overhead. As all of the Police return to the station, they see on TV that the North Tower of the World Trade Center has been hit by the plane. Sergeant McLoughlin assigns many of the officers to assist in a precautionary evacuation attempt of the North Tower and they board a Metropolitan Transit Authobus. On the bus, they hear reports that the South Tower is also hit by another plane. When they arrive at the World Trade Center, they realize the extent of the disaster, and see one of the victims jump out of the towers to certain death. The men proceed to get safety equipment from Building 5 and enter the concourse between the towers.
The group consists of McLoughlin, Jimeno, Dominick Pezzulo and Antonio Rodrigues. Officer Christopher Amoroso appears to inform them of other events, such as the attack on the Pentagon, the second plane's hit on the South Tower and an attack on Israel though the group does not accept any of these as true. As the men prepare to enter the North Tower, the buildings begin to rumble. McLoughlin realizes that the South Tower is collapsing onto them and that their only chance of survival is to run into the service elevator shaft. Amoroso trips and does not have time to get up, and Rodrigues is unable to get to the shaft in time, resulting in both deaths. McLoughlin, Jimeno and Pezzulo manage to escape the huge amounts of dust and rubble flying down from the South Tower. However, as the rubble continues to crush the elevator shaft, the three are trapped. As the cascade of debris subsides, Pezzulo realizes he can free himself and manages to move nearer to Jimeno in order to shift the debris covering his legs, but cannot make it to McLoughlin as he is trapped deeper in the rubble. Pezzulo tries but fails to shift the debris due to its weight, and is instructed by McLoughlin not to leave.
As Pezzulo becomes optimistic that they will live, the rumbling begins again as the North Tower starts to collapse. Although Jimeno and McLoughlin are not further harmed, Pezzulo is fatally injured when a concrete slab falls into the hole, crushing his torso. After he fires a gun through a gap in the rubble to try to alert rescuers to their position, he dies. Jimeno and McLoughlin spend hours under the rubble, in pain but exchanging stories about their lives and families. McLoughlin is particularly anxious to keep Jimeno from falling asleep and Jimeno also realizes that by straining to grab a metal bar above his body, he can make a noise that rescuers might hear. Two United States Marines, Dave Karnes and Jason Thomas, who are searching for survivors, do hear it and find the men, calling for help to dig them out. Jimeno is rescued first, and then hours later McLoughlin is lifted out of the debris, barely alive and in critical condition. They are then both reunited with their distraught families at the hospital. Two years after the attacks, McLoughlin and Jimeno attend a barbecue with their families: McLoughlin's wife Donna, Jimeno's wife Allison, daughter Bianca, and their newest addition Olivia.
The epilogue states that John and Will were two of the 20 people pulled out alive and are now retired from active duty. Dave Karnes re-enlisted in the Marines.

Tags: revenge, flashback

Review:
Whatever one wants to say about Oliver Stone, he showed a commitment to faithfully telling the story of these two Port Authority cops trapped in the wreckage of the World Trade Center and their worried wives.I liked a lot of the scenes in the beginning, the little mundane details like when Michael Pena's character is going about his everyday street beat.
For a film called World Trade Center, I guess I was expecting a little more context and not something focused so narrowly on these two Port Authority cops and an ex-Marine from Connecticut (as the only person outside these two cops' families whose story is told in the film, the focus on him reeks of jingoism in a GI Joe/Rambo vein).
Oliver Stone, by comparison, has failed to effectively tie the experiences of these two trapped cops with the larger events of the day, and his film suffers as a result.
It feels like a soap opera set against the greatest tragedy of our age, and that just doesn't work for me.In short...not intense enough, not enough context, too much melodrama, not enough of a sense of reverence for what happened, highly impressive job of recreating the debris field, a charismatic performance from Maggie, overall a mediocre film..
With a tragedy as large as this, and a bucket-of-possible-plots as filled as this, it's quite disturbing to see Oliver Stone hit his low-point of his entire career on this exact project.With a mere fifth of the runtime away, we have our heroes in distress, with little to no character buildup been done to carry us through the last four-fifths of cinematic pain with any kind of relation to the characters put on the screen.It's as if the story is so well-known that the script writer sees no point in drawing out the basics, which is perfectly understandable as you'd have to be literally dead to not know a heck of a lot about 9/11, and that counts for Americans and Eskimos alike.
The only thing letting you know that they're "the good guys" is the ever-present string ensemble playing fiddle for them all along.This movie presents no story, no character buildup, no suspense, no action sequences (expecting to see the towers fall in state-of-the-art CGI wonder?
Stone tries to carry the movie just by showing how sad the families were and how scared the policemen were, meanwhile allowing the audience no interesting plot points to hold on to, nor any significance to the tragedy.
In the end, I have to conclude that Oliver Stone just wanted to get some cheap emotional reactions from the crowd, because at one point the movie says that it is about the potential for good in humanity and how strong we can be in the face of adversity.
September 11 was the most important and tragic event in my lifetime, and I think it deserves more respect than to be made into a generic, poorly-written disaster movie less than five years after it happened..
Something surprising happened while watching Oliver Stone's "World Trade Center" - I realized how much more I appreciated Paul Greengrass' "United 93." Greengrass' film was lean, stripped of any backstory for any of the characters.
Very simply, it told what happened that horrible day on the plane - though he used some license - and didn't wallow in needless sentimentality.Stone, on the other hand and rather surprisingly, seems to have gone out of his way to make something that would be so palatable and inoffensive that it would turn out rather bland, above anything else.The 45 minutes of "World Trade Center" are terrific.
After offering us quick glimpses into the lives of Port Authority cops John McLoughlin (Nicolas Cage) and Will Jimeno (Michael Pena), Andrea Berloff's script gets us right into the attacks on the Twin Towers.The crumbling of the towers, which still is incredibly difficult to watch, let alone fathom, is handled with taste, but also is awfully gripping.
There are moments that surely someone of Stone's calibre should have realized needed to be rewritten because the dialogue seems mediocre at best.Where the film suffers is when the story cuts between the two trapped men and their families, especially their wives.
His character is far more engaging than Cage's; Pena's emotions come off without any artifice.I can't help but feel that "World Trade Center" could have been the gut-wrenching experience Stone intended it to be had he and Berloff approached the story much in the way Greengrass did "United 93." Stone's movie is far from lean.
"World Trade Center" tells the gripping true story of two of the last men pulled out of the rubble of Ground Zero alive.Nicolas Cage and Michael Pena play Port Authority Police officers.
The only reason why people are going to watch disaster-movie nr 911 is because it stars the twin towers.It's a sad way of making some dough out of this (film-wise) uninteresting event.A couple of thousand people dieing is (how sad as it may be on a personal level) no unique happening; how many people die in Dafur, Ethiopia every month?
Yeah I know some people are going to panic and whine that I'm a horrible person for not liking the World Trade Center movie, but this was just annoying.
The writers spent too much time basing the movie on two men and their "story of triumph" that the true events of the day were left in the shadows.There were times during the movie that I almost forgot what I was watching because it seemed like these were the only two men (along with their families) affected by the tragedy.
There was no rescue of other people even mentioned until the ending credits, at which time they finally acknowledged that people were actually lost.The movie gives the impression that September 11th and the days following was an uplifting experience because two men were found alive.
Lets not make the worst day in our country's history into an uplifting "happy ending" version of titanic.Throughout the movie there were 3 mentions of lost people other than the main characters.
Just as Fahrenheit 9/11 was Michael Moore's journalistic failure, World Trade Center was Stone's sellout.Instead of another 9/11 movie that attempts to give the American public an easy hero or two, why not just make a movie that examines what REALLY happened on that day?
Now, I must say that I am not an Oliver Stone fan, however, upon hearing this movie was nothing like an Oliver Stone film I decided to check it out.The storyline for the film, as stated, was based on the stories of a few Port Authority police who survived the collapse of the building while being trapped for hours in the rubble.
(Honestly, I don't know where'd go all those millions that cost this movie.)The characters -and specially the marine- are crude imitations: They don't make you feel the pain, the despair, the fury, the hopeless and the grief that America lived in S-11 (unless, obviously, that you lived it).And in my humble opinion, all the fault falls down on Oliver Stone.
The film is benign in the sense that it does not postulate about what happened that day and why, which is not your typical Stone movie.
Instead, it takes its time telling an intimate story about a group of Rescue Workers caught up in the collapse of the World Trade Center towers and their battle to survive/escape an unimaginable hell.The film works because Stone takes the time to flush out his characters; we genuinely care about these people and feel their emotions as things turned from bad to worse that day.
So, my friend and I decided to see it, I have to say that it was beautifully done and showed great respect for that horrible day.Gratefully and I must thank Oliver Stone, he didn't reenact or computerize the planes crashing into the towers, this movie just focused mainly on the policemen and firemen who gave their lives that day and to two strong and brave policemen who ended up in the most brutal and hellish nightmare, being trapped and buried alive under tons and tons of what was a 110 story building.
95% of the world only witnessed what happened on the outside, finally, this movie showed us what it was like to be in New York and what the firemen and policemen went through, along with their families.I have to say that it was so mentally disturbing though to see the towers in the beginning of the film, I actually started sobbing, because it's still to this day unbelievable that they're just not there.
But still, it was pictured perfectly and beautifully done, I loved that they showed how much of a normal day it was for all of us before the plane hit the first tower.It's a beautifully acted and hopeful film that will make you remember that that day not only showed the worst evil in people, but it brought out some of the best and heroic acts anyone has ever witnessed.
For what they actually do in this movie it didn't have to go that as long as it did i could have summed the whole thing up in 30 minutes, instead of dragging on and on, i've got to say while watching the movie me and my friends wanted to walk out of the cinemas it was that bad.So to sum it up.World Trade Center The movie was Boring and a complete disappointment.
This heightens the viewer's fear and anxiety and makes for an effective experience.The movie follows two port authority cops as they try to evacuate the World Trade Center.
Some people have commented that this movie didn't accurately depict 9/11 and have complained that Oliver Stone didn't portray the events or that he milked us for emotion.I disagree.
This was a movie, that showed what two men - and what their friends/family/departments went through and I thought of and felt for everyone through their story.From what I've read...and from the commentaries in the film, it is factual for their story and I think it's just a coincidence that it just HAPPENED to be good enough for a Hollywood story.
But this year, Hollywood has shown a willingness to tackle 9/11 from a deeply human perspective, first through the TV film FLIGHT 93, then Paul Greengrass' excellent feature film UNITED 93, and now through director Oliver Stone's WORLD TRADE CENTER.Stone, a native New Yorker, but also a polarizing figure of the cinema via his dark and controversial explorations of recent U.S. history and politics (PLATOON; JFK, etc.), has sought to focus on the true meaning of heroism by focusing in on Port Authority officers John McLoughlin and William Jimeno, who, along with their fellow Port Authority and NYC fire and police personnel, went into the World Trade Center towers to evacuate as many people as possible from there after the two jets were rammed into the buildings.
Stone, however, stays away from the kind of political critique that was a hallmark of JFK and several of his other films, and shows us the kind of true heroism that the far-right has often accused Hollywood of deliberately avoiding, but which they themselves couldn't possibly manufacture even on their best day.Along with FLIGHT 93 and UNITED 93, WORLD TRADE CENTER proves that Hollywood is ready to respond with a clear, realistic, and human look at one of this nation's darkest days.
I went into it unbiased, deciding that I would indeed like to hear the story of what happened to the two officers this movie is about, and I would take it for what it is, regardless of whether or not people think it's still too soon.This is a very moving and intense look at the story of the officers' ordeal as well as what their families had to go through.
Overall, the acting is great and the characters feel real, but in some scenes you may feel like the sentimentality is being forced and doesn't feel genuine.I will recommend this movie to people who are not dead set against it, or someone who is just looking for exactly what it is: a movie made for entertainment and as a tribute to those that died..
When I first heard about this movie, I feared Stone would concentrate on conspiracy theories as he did in JFK or take the film as an opportunity to show that terrorists are people too as Spielberg did in Munich.
Neither the name AL-Qaeda, nor Osama Bin Laden, is so much as whispered.Despite the near flood of documentaries on the terrorist attacks heading toward the small screen this September, Stone's film, for many Americans, may end up being the definitive cinematic record of what it felt like to be inside the hellish cyclone known simply by the numbers 9/11.To offer a faithful recreation of that historical catastrophe, however, Stone owed viewers the whole truth, not merely a brilliant, graphic portrayal of what happened and how it affected the lives of some of those involved.As it ends, a written postscript appears that describes what happened to the buried Port Authority policemen, their families, and the ex-Marine who helped rescue them (whose last line is: "We're going to need some good men out there to revenge this").
Oliver Stone and Paramount have gone under cover of the 'based on real events' shield in order to create one of the most shockingly propagandist blockbusters of the last twenty years.The film offends on a number of levels, not least because of its exploitative and unnecessary depiction of the suffering of those who were trapped in the World Trade Center on September 11 2001.
But the mark of the real Stone, one that carries the heft of his personal opinion about an event (Platoon) or his off-center look at history (JFK), is absent.Let's face it: Two cops, John McLoughlin (Cage) and Will Jimeno (Michael Pena), buried beneath rubble with small talk to keep themselves alive is neither great drama nor riveting suspense when you know ahead of time they are 2 of the 20 to be saved and their dialog doesn't come close to the bite of WWII film foxhole repartee.
(In fact, if you haven't seen the movie but know the history, you might guess what happens even now, before you start.) It's obviously a movie about survival, about ordinary people doing what they can to help each other, and individuals rediscovering what really matters in their lives.For me, all of these elements are a given, and were maybe unavoidable in an Oliver Stone film (he's a director who embraces Hollywood's emotional ability to sway and move a viewer with sights and sounds).
"World Trade Center" deliberately doesn't show the most sensational footage of the towers going down or the second plane hitting the building; it is about and from the perspective of the two Port Authority policemen who went in to evacuate people and got trapped, not knowing that the buildings had collapsed.
I credit Oliver Stone with trying to make every detail as true to life as possible.The four main characters who played the trapped men and their wives -- Nicolas Cage, Michael Pena, Maria Bello and Maggie Gyllenhaal -- did their real-live counterparts proud.
its just sickening to watch this, not because it breaks your heart but because you know oliver stone is sitting at home fluffing his pillows and smoking cigar's with the money you give him to make a movie that laughs in the faces of the terrorists saying " you giving destroy anything we have and well still make money out of it " so don't fear viewers because as soon as they do it again nicholas cage will be round the corner to save the day with another Hollywood blockbuster.
Being that I saw this in NYC, I felt it was OK to cry, I was sitting in a room with people who lost those close and dear.Stone presents a deeply personal narrative of two real-life Port Authority police officers trapped in the rubble of the North Tower, simple and sweet.When you ask yourself do I want to see this movie or not, bring your heart into the movie and know that it was not made to anger you, it was made to honor those who died on that day..
Stone didn't want this movie to be yet another over-dramatized Hollywood film.
By taking the view that the most important and pertinent story to tell is of two Port Authority policemen (who survive the ordeal) is a satisfactory summation of the tragedy is: 1) terrible storytelling and, 2) shows tremendous disrespect to those who were the focus of the terrorists...everyday Americans doing everyday things.The film is technically brilliant, as one would expect from Oliver Stone.
This is the true story of Will Jimeno and John McLoughlin, two Port Authority police officers who rushed into the burning World Trade Center on 9/11 to help rescue people but became trapped themselves when the tower collapsed.The film is sad, but I wouldn't call it compelling.
Will Jimeno (Michael Peña) and his sergeant John McLoughlin (Nicolas Cage) are found alive trapped under the wreckage while the rescue teams fight to save them."World Trade Center" is based on the accounts of the people evolved in the aftermath of this tragedy and tells the story of two of the survivors.
As the attack on the World Trade Center becomes more of a part of history, and less a part of the current news, more sensational movies about the events of that day are likely to be made.
Masterpiece.These are just three of the words that have appeared in various print reviews for the new September 11th themed movie World Trade Centre.Directed by Oliver Stone (Platoon, Nixon) and starring Nicholas Cage (Matchstick Men), the movie chronicles the hours of two Port Authority Police Officers that were trapped in the rubble of the fallen World Trade Centre after the terrorist attacks on that fateful morning in 2001.The film's opening is quiet.