America the beautiful

Review by Vives Anunciacion

World Trade Center
Directed by Oliver Stone
Written by Andrea Berloff
Starring Nicholas Cage, Michael Peña
Paramount Pictures
** ½ (2 ½ stars)

I always get mixed reactions from an Oliver Stone film. But it’s a personal thing, a matter of taste. In fairness, the set-ups and the acting in World Trade Center are never too showy nor over-dramatic. But it is erratic – beautiful and ugly, poetic and literal in various places. World Trade Center is Stone’s intensely dramatic dedication to the families who survived the 9/11 tragedy.

John McLoughlin (Nicholas Cage) and Will Jimeno (Michael Peña) are two of the hundreds of Port Authority police officers called in to rescue the people trapped in the collapsing towers of the World Trade Center when the walls crash in and they themselves get trapped in the rubble.

The movie follows the stories above and below ground, between John’s and Will’s physical and mental struggle to stay alive beneath layers of twisted metal and concrete of the fallen towers and the story above ground as their families resolve to keep believing that their loved ones are still alive. In this emotionally charged movie, Peña comes out more sympathetic and out-performs Oscar winner Cage.

There’s no question the visuals and the design recreating the horrific images captured on CNN that day are remarkably stunning. Even more stunning is the scene from inside the concourse when the towers implode. And then there are Stone’s jarring intrusive images typical of his vision, whether it’s a stoplight representing authority in absentia or a shot of the earth from up in space or a Christ figure holding a water bottle representing, what else, salvation. In these instances the movie roller coasters from sublime to paralytic.

Moreso, the movie plays out like a recruitment movie for the US Marines, and is most annoying to progress slowly to a happy ending, how, as Sergeant Karnes (Michael Shannon) puts it, “it’s their mission.” World Trade Center’s mission is to unearth from the rubble the cracked American ego. It could have easily ended with a shot of the American flag fluttering in the wind with God Bless America playing in the background. Interestingly, I distinctly remember CNN showing a certain city celebrating the Sept. 11 attacks. That is not even insinuated in World Trade Center.

September 11 didn’t have a happy ending, because if it did, then we should all move on and stop the war on terror.