Here comes Desson Thomson of The Washington Post to take the sneering role. The film is a snooze, he suggests, because its heroes are trapped instead of active, and "the film feels decidedly small-screen, bar a couple of scenes, in large part because the characters feel stock rather than uniquely drawn." Translation: I'm disappointed because the film doesn't live up to Stone's wild reputation. It actually tries to stay true to the story of these men, and finding them to be heroes even though they didn't feel like heroes. Let's step aside from the fact that if Hollywood made a movie about heroic action against Islamo-fascists, can we expect the liberal film critics to applaud, or be appalled?Well, let this liberal film critic state that I would happily applaud a good film about heroic action against Islamo-fascists. (As, indeed, I think I did when I reviewed United 93, though I must admit to not understanding what differentiates an Islamo-fascist from an Islamic fundamentalist or an Islamic militant. For now, I'll assume all terrorists qualify). But in this matter, I have to agree with Desson Thomson: With World Trade Center, Oliver Stone has taken an inspiring, true story of heroic rescue and turned it into a plodding, unfocused film that aims to jerk tears but fails even to engage viewers.
The film tells the story of John McLoughlin (Nicolas Cage) and Will Jemino (Michael Peña), two Port Authority police officers who were called into the towers soon after the first plane hit. The scenes just before the towers fall are the film's strongest, as Stone effectively uses the creaking sounds in the towers and the morning's vibe of widespread panic to keep us in anxious suspense for the inevitable, breathtaking downfall of the buildings. Crushed under the rubble after the towers collapse, Jemino and McLoughlin manage to stay alive by talking to one another -- covering subjects both profound and mundane, from family life to the theme music to Starsky and Hutch.
I don't fault World Trade Center for highlighting one of the few stories of survival on a day of tremendous loss, but Stone's attempts to place the rescue of Jemino and McLoughlin within the greater context of that day's events leave the film in an awkward straddle. Stone chooses poorly in both directions -- the significance of the attacks is suggested in arbitrary scenes of people in Africa and Europe watching television screens, while Jemino and McLoughlin's plight seems surprisingly detached from its surroundings. Instead of focusing on the rescue efforts or the agonizing hours the two men spent under the rubble, Stone cuts to flashbacks of the men with their wives (ably portrayed by Maggie Gyllenhaal and Maria Bello) and to scenes of the families waiting in tortured suspense for word of the men's survival. The result is a sentimental rescue story that, while touching enough, is oddly stripped of context. The men could just as easily have been victim to an earthquake as to an epochal act of terrorism.
It is particularly surprising that World Trade Center gives rather short shrift to the most heroic aspect of the story -- the actual rescue. The audience never really learns much about the rescuers or the complexity of the mission. As Rebecca Liss recently pointed out in Slate, many of the rescuers risked their lives and displayed impressive ingenuity in extricating Jemino and McLoughlin from the rubble. But outside of a few characters -- chiefly David Karnes (Michael Shannon), the fiercely religious ex-Marine who first discovered the policemen -- none of the men involved in the rescue gets much screen time. Cage and Peña's characters dominate a narrative that could have used a few more voices.
Soon after the events of 9/11, Oliver Stone got himself into a bit of trouble for making some incendiary statements about American capitalism's role in producing the attacks. Given such comments, it's no wonder that many people chafed at the prospect of an Oliver Stone film about the event. Stone could very well be responding to such critics with World Trade Center, but in the course of neutering his politics he seems to have lost some of his instinct for storytelling. Stone may be known for adding wild flourishes to historical events, but in World Trade Center he's managed the reverse: he's taken an unconventional tale of authentic heroism and sucked the life out of it.
Sudhir Muralidhar is a writer living in New York.
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