World Trade Center: Director Oliver Stone Takes on a Story from 9/11

Paramount is the first movie studio to release a big budget movie covering the events of September 11, 2001, and eyebrows were raised when director Oliver Stone – better known for his violent, political/conspiracy theory movies such as Platoon, Salvador Natural Born Killers, Nixon and JFK was chosen as the man at the helm – especially in the wake of the disaster that was his last movie, Alexander.

World Trade Center is not so much a story of that day, but more of two Port Authority police officers who were pulled out of the rubble of the twin towers. John McLaughlin (played by Nicholas Cage) and Will Jimeno (Michael Pe�±a) were number 18 and 19 of just 20 people who survived the chaos that claimed over 2,700 lives.

Part of a team who entered one of the towers when it was thought that a plane had “accidentally” crashed into it, they were almost immediately running for their lives when the tower collapsed, and only three of them made it into the relative safety of a nearby elevator shaft.

McLoughlin and Pena were almost entirely buried, and after unsuccessfully trying to help Jimeno, the their officer was then crushed himself by another fall of debris and, in agony, shot himself, leaving McLoughlin and Jimeno trapped many feet underground.

Back in their respective homes, their wives and children deal with the horror of the incident itself, then the realization that their men were in the towers and are probably dead. Allison (Maggie Gyllenhaal) is pregnant with their second child and convinced that Will is dead, whereas Donna (Maria Bello) seems unaffected at first. Her marriage to John had hit a rocky patch, and she doesn’t know quite how to feel.

As the world watches on in disbelief, Sgt Dave Karnes (Michael Shannon) a marine in Wilton, Connecticut, tells his work colleagues that America is now at war, and after praying in church he feels sure that God wants him to go to New York and help.

Virtual strangers, Will and John talk to keep each other from falling into what could be a fatal sleep, and as the hours pass they start to have visions and thoughts of their family. Above ground, their family members are trying desperately to find out what is happening, but no-one seems to know.

The determined Karnes makes his way through the dust into the now off-limits Ground Zero and, armed with just a flashlight, starts to look for survivors, eventually hearing Will. Overjoyed at the news that some – any – of their colleagues are alive, a host of uniforms launch themselves into the rescue effort, crawling down amongst the rubble to reach the two dying men and rescue them.

9/11 is that rarest of things; a defining moment in world history. It shocked the world and especially America, so in many ways a film like this was always going to be exactly what a studio would – or could – make: a sentimental, inspiring story that relies rather too much on clichÃ?©s and avoids too much of the gore.

That’s fine in many ways, but the fact remains that this event was on a global scale – 87 countries lost citizens – but this story, which deliberately focuses on two men and their families only – lacked a great deal of emotion, depth and drama, especially when the two leads are literally motionless for most of the movie, and we already know they make it out.

The decision not to show the planes hitting the towers or to really spend time with anything outside the two families lessens the impact of the story, and, I have to say, made it only as averagely compelling as a TV movie about any survival/disaster story. It could have been set anywhere really, and the events of that day were greater than that.

Still, it was a decision the writer, director, producer and studio made, and whilst your heart really beats when you are in the dirt with John and Will (Pena gives a great performance, whereas Cage is literally just a talking head, plus his character freely admits to “hardly ever smiling”) and when they are being rescued, it’s pretty much soft focus, PG-13 stuff the rest of the time (no swearing, no blood).

It’s seems like there should be more for something of this magnitude, and when the robotic Karnes talks on his cell phone about “avenging this” and we see in the end crawl that he served two terms in Iraq (a country that had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks), a chill goes down your spine as you wonder what the long-term effects of that day are going to be for both America and the world. Flag-waving, conservative right wing supporters will love it.