World Trade Center

The ex-Marine, without a shred of hesitation, walks bravely into smoking debris that was once the World Trade Center, while observing how ‘God uses smoke as a curtain to shield us from what we’re not ready to see.’ Many potential viewers for World Trade Center may still seek comfort in the cloudy shell of escapism, unready to see any film that attempts to deal with the day that changed all of our lives.

Yet with the war still raging and terrorism remaining a daily occurrence, there is simply nothing “too soon” about a film that not only analyzes the pivotal day of September 11th, but honors the people who risked (and often lost) their lives, performing acts of heroism rarely seen in our frequently selfish society. United 93 did this brilliantly earlier in the year, and now muckraking filmmaker Oliver Stone attempts the same thing in the twilight of August, with this surprisingly straightforward memorial. With utter exactness, Stone’s film tells the true story of two police officers who were trapped in the rubble of the first collapsed tower. They were only among twenty survivors, and ended up as consultants on this film, while also appearing in cameo roles. Their survival provided a day of unbearable tragedy with a ray of uplifting optimism.

By focusing primarily on their lives, and their rescue, Stone avoids the temptation to delve into any conspiracy theories, by simply honoring the brave acts of courage that were performed on a day more horrifying than any horror film. The result is something rather extraordinary, a film that bridges the political gaps in our divisive country, by stating a universal truth that can be agreed on by all; the people who put their lives on the line to save others that day reminded us of the human race’s potential for selfless heroism.

Yet after Paul Greengrass’s masterpiece United 93 thrust viewers into the horrors and triumphant sacrifice of 9/11, with documentary-style realism and exhilarating power, World Trade Center’s built-in studio polish simply pales in comparison. It tells its true story using familiar tear-jerking scenes that bear an uncanny resemblance to the equally conventional – and equally compelling – Ladder 49 (2004’s tribute to the sacrificial nobility of firefighters, with Joaquin Phoenix). Yet this inherent familiarity created a certain dramatic distance between me and the film, even despite the fact that everything it depicted actually happened. Nevertheless, Oliver Stone’s film is still a strong and powerful one, thanks to the usual emotional passion for his characters he’s demonstrated in even his most controversial epics, such as JFK and Nixon. I found myself welling up with tears at even the most predictable moments.

This is largely due to a uniformly excellent cast, headlined by Nicholas Cage as the veteran officer, who delivers some of his best work to date, by creating a character of considerable depth that, for the majority of the film, is only a scarred head poking out of the debris (Stone’s visualization of their claustrophobia is among the film’s more disturbing aspects). As the worried wives, Maria Bello and Maggie Gyllenhaal emerge as forceful and complex individuals in their own right, instead of being reduced to the movie cliché of the ‘frail, devoted female’. Bello has a moment where she hugs a complete stranger, also related to one of the tragedy’s victims, and the scene becomes a beautiful illustration of the unity that seemed to bind us together during those days when we were all reeling with grief. Gyllenhaal’s character is usually involved in the sequences where Stone effectively captures the surrealistic nature of the day, such as when she wanders through a CVS (as if sleepwalking in a dream where normalcy still existed), or runs into the street where the exact same news coverage echoes from inside every house.

Even though the terrorists are never mentioned, and the planes hitting the towers remain unseen, the countless mechanical whistles that erupt from the debris (illustrated by a stunningly convincing set built in California), signaling the casualties that lie beneath, is enough to jettison us back to the unspeakable sadness of the day’s untimely loss. The true standout of the film, however, is Michael Pena, who was astonishing as the locksmith in Crash, and here makes his rookie police officer an embodiment of the country’s scarred idealism, that is both heartbreaking and (toward the end) supremely uplifting.

All the while, Stone never lets his trademark visual style intervene (with the exception of an overabundance of fade-outs), thus culminating in a film as reverent as any war memorial you could name. Although the film treads waters ancient to the Hollywood formula, it focuses on a small human story against a vast backdrop that is true, which is more than can be said for lesser films, like Michael Bay’s atrocious Pearl Harbor. World Trade Center is not a better film than United 93, or even its equal in impact, but it’s the one most people will be willing to see, and that’s an achievement in its own right.

Rating: **** (out of *****)