World Trade Center (2006)
Directed by Oliver Stone
Written by Andrea Berloff
Starring Nicolas Cage, Michael Pena, Michael Shannon, Stephen Dorff, Jon Bernthal
Release Date August 9th, 2006
Published August 9th, 2006
When United 93 was released back in March of this year I was floored by that films documentary realism and emotional punch. However, I was unable to recommend the film. To whom do you recommend a film that gives the feel of actually reliving the greatest tragedy you have ever witnessed. Standing in the theater the following day watching audiences cue up with pop and popcorn in hand I was struck with how vulgar it seemed to munch popcorn while reliving 9/11.
World Trade Center, director Oliver Stone's flag waving, rah rah, patriotic remembrance of that day feels like a film you could munch popcorn to. Classically Hollywood, World Trade Center is about bravery, self sacrifice and the kind of heroism rarely ever seen. It's also saccharine, remote and rather simpleminded. Though skillful and respectful World Trade Center fails to grasp the gravity of it's subject and thus never feels important enough to justify having been made at all.
On September 11th John McLoughlin (Nicholas Cage) rolled out of bed at 3:30 am without waking his wife Donna (Maria Bello), it was going to be just another tuesday morning at the port authority police precinct. Will Jimeno (Michael Pena) rose a few hours after Mcloughlin and kissed his wife Allison goodbye before joining McLoughlin at PAPD headquarters.
This of course was to be no ordinary Tuesday for anyone in the country. After receiving assignments for the day, McLaughlin in charge of everything and Jimenez sent to Port Authority bus terminal, things turn horrifying quickly. As Jimenez is shooing away homeless people the shadow of the first plane passes over him headed for it's deathly collision.
Returning to the station, Jimenez will join McLaughlin, his pal Dom Pezullo (Jay Hernandez) and several other officers in heading off to the trade center towers to evacuate the people inside. Arriving at the towers, after commandeering a city bus, the officers find a horror show of the injured and the dead. Some are victims who leapt to their death rather than burn alive in the towers.
McLoughlin, Jimenez, Pezullo and another officer, Antonio Rodrigues (Armando Riesco), are the guys who chose to run into the towers and get people out. The cops are in the concourse between the towers when they began to collapse. Rodrigues was killed, Jimenez and McLoghlin were buried by the first tower collapse while Pezullo managed to be unharmed and attempted to free Jimenez. Sadly Pezullo died when the second tower fell.
One of the most striking elements of these scenes in which the actors are trapped in the rubble is the complete loss of time. Unless you methodically researched and kept time on your watch you don't remember and cannot keep track of the time between when the planes hit, when the first tower fell and when the second tower fell. We have the benefit of hindsight but the characters do not, so every scene in which they wander the trade center gathering materials, in which they are first nearly crushed by debris of the first tower to the second tower falling, is filled with dreadful tension.
As filmed by Oliver Stone these scenes are the best in the film. Harrowing, nail biting moments that have a real emotional kick even as we already know what is about to happen. The actors approach to these moments is stellar without any pretense or knowingness, each actor plowed ahead acting on their assigned duties, working through fears of the unknown, fears of a world on edge that they cannot comprehend.
Nicholas Cage is especially good in the early scenes of World Trade Center before his portrayal devolves into a series of mushy flashbacks. Early in World Trade Center Cage thrives as the efficient, matter of fact police sergeant who also happens to be the officer behind the disaster scenarios at trade towers. When McLoughlin tells a superior officer that we prepared for any number of occurances after the attack in 1994 but we did not plan for this, the lines hit hard.
The most fascinating moments of World Trade Center focus on a supporting character, Staff Sgt. Dave Karnes. Working on 9/11 as an insurance salesman in Connecticutt, Karnes left work soon after seeing the attacks on television. He visited his pastor and told him that god was calling him to the towers to save people. He went to a barbershop and got a military buzzcut and pulled his marine corp uniform out of mothballs and made his way to New York.
Arriving at the site, passing security thanks to the uniform, Karnes was the first person to jump onto the fallen towers and begin searching for survivors. Joined by a fellow marine, Thomas played ever so briefly by William Mapother, Karnes searched the rubble and found Jimenez in McLoughlin some 20 feet below, trapped in the rubble. Karnes determination and heroism are stunning, so stunning that many have found his story unbelievable. Dave Karnes is for real and his story was real, one of many extraordinary stories that fateful day.
Karnes' story could warrant his own movie, he went on to fight in Iraq for 18 months at the age of 45, the attacks having inspired him to re-enlist. Unfortunately there are only so many stories that Oliver Stone and writer Andrea Berloff could work into a reasonable runtime. Another great story was that of former paramedic Chuck Sereika, played by Frank Whaley, who also gets only a gloss in World trade Center. When Chuck arrived at the site he was no longer a medic, having spent the most recent months in rehab. He intended only to tie a few tourniquets and help where needed. He ended up the first man inside the rubble when McLoughlin and Jimenez were found.
All of these stories are dramatic and compelling but they are the periphery of what is a real Hollywood-ization of 9/11. Most of World Trade Center is dedicated to the heightened melodrama of McLoughlin and Jimenez trying to keep each other alive and there families at home trying not to fall apart. The heightened emotion in these scenes is portrayed with a belt it to the back of the room, broadway musical like theatricality. To much of World Trade Center rings with a tinsel town phoniness that is anathema to a movie based on 9/11.
Most obvious of these egregiously inflated scenes comes at the end of the film. As Nicholas Cage as John McLoughlin is lifted from the rubble of the World Trade Center his stretcher passes through the hands of hundreds of rescue workers who shake Cage's hand and he gives the thumbs up to. With a star the size of Nick Cage laying in the stretcher the scene plays like a Hollywood homage to the heroic saviors of 9/11.
If any group are worthy of a big Hollywood thank you it's the fire fighters, policeman and rescue workers who saved what few lives could be saved that day but the justification does not make the scene feel any less false and cloying.
I find it bizarre and a little disgusting to try and examine the entertaining aspects of World Trade Center. By comparison I rated United 93 a zero in my popcorn rating. That film was just too much like watching 9/11 happen again for me to treat it like a typical movie. World Trade Center , because of it's star power and melodrama is more of a movie movie. I was able to seperate from World Trade Center far more than I could the more visceral and real United 93.
That seperation comes twofold. I was able to find aspects of World Trade Center that I could judge from a movie making standpoint, things such as the performances of Cage, Pena, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Maria Bello all of which are solid with just a hint of falsehood. Also Andrea Berloff's often overwrought and at times gut wrenching script that never fails to hit a melodramatic note but also misses few chances to really touch you with sincerity.
However, this is still a 9/11 movie and it is rubbing a wound that is still raw. Oliver Stone is very careful to be respectful with his storytelling. There is no shock factor, no forced conspiracy theory, really no controversy about Stone's interpretation whatsoever. The film is an earnest examination of character and heroism that uses the greatest attack on American soil as a framing device. That is both respectable and repugnant. It is both a great piece of storytelling and an impossible rendering of a painful memory.
Because the film is directed by Oliver Stone parsing the films political aspects should become quite a sport. However, these efforts are futile. Stone honestly avoids any overt political message in favor of a simple tale of heroism. If you want to find politics in World Trade Center they will likely be your own. I have read reviews that claim Stone's use of a Brooks and Dunn song on the soundtrack is an example of his red state bent. On the other hand I personally read a minor political statement into Stone's montage of citizens around the globe reacting to the attack and rallying around America. The Bush administration went on to squander this international goodwill almost completely. That however, is my own parsing of the scene not Oliver Stone's.
In searching the film for political viewpoints you cannot ignore the most fascinating and complicated character in the film, Staff Sgt. Dave Karnes played by Michael Shannon. There is no question that Shannon was a hero that day selflessly risking his life to locate McLoughlin and Jimenez in the rubble. On the other hand, the creepy intensity that Michael Shannon brings to the role allows a political interpretation.
Karnes is a neo-con wet dream of god and country patriotism who re-enlisted in the military twice to join the war on terror. Karnes is undoubtedly brave and heroic but, the creepy intensity with which he is portrayed could be read, if one were so inclined, as a metaphor for the right wing's frighteningly single minded pursuit of the war in Iraq. That again though, is me bringing my personal politics to a chapter of the movie that may not have politics at all.
Oliver Stone's reputation simply invites this sort of speculation.
World Trade Center is a film that fills me with conflict. There is nothing horribly offensive about the film. It is relatively well crafted with some very powerful moments. But, I cannot escape my own horror at watching 9/11 dramatized. It's still too raw and too fresh in my memory for a movie to portray in a way I feel will show respect and deference for what happened.
That is not Oliver Stone's fault. He made what I'm sure he feels is the best movie he could make given the materials he had to work with. Much of what he delivers is Hollywood hokum that is out of place in a movie about 9/11. However, there is far too much solid work for me to write the film off completely. Michael Shannon for one deserves a serious Oscar push as does Stone's set design team whose attention to detail may be the films most emotional experience.
To whom do you recommend a film about 9/11? I cannot think of anyone to whom I would say this film is a must see. Maybe the academy for what I mentioned before but with great reservation. I cannot fathom who would want to watch a dramatization of this horrifying event in history when so much of it is still so fresh in our collective memories.
