When I heard that Oliver Stone was making a movie about 9/11 I certainly didn't expect the result to be so bland and sentimental. I expected it to be laced with conspiracy theories and liberal politics. And while I probably would have disagreed with most of it, it would have been a more interesting movie than this one.
The plot revolves around the true story of Port Authority Police Officers John McLoughlin and Will Jimeno. They were the two Officers who were buried in the rubble following the collapse of the towers and then pulled out hours later. They were 2 of only 20 people who were pulled from the rubble. Along with their story, the movie also is told from the perspective of their wives. It is this side of the story that resembles a soap opera. In fact, the whole movie has a Lifetime Movie of the Week feel.
Right from the beginning the movie sets a tone of melodrama that belies the stark reality of that day. It opens with dawn over New York City, but rather than portraying it as a normal morning, the scenes around the city are covered by sentimental music that seems to portend something is coming. And the people they show are all uniformly nice and polite to each other. Two strangers on a subway pass chatter about Derek Jeter. A cop politely asks a homeless guy to move off of the Jackie Gleason statue outside the Port Authority Bus Terminal and the homeless guy politely banters back. Why not show New York in all its hurried, brash rudeness. (And yes, some of us in New York are polite, but to show it as such an idyllic morning is wrong.) Following these shots, the cop outside Port Authority, notices the shadow of the first plane to hit the towers pass overhead. All these shots build to the thing that finally happens, which is the destruction of the towers. The thing about that morning though, is that it was just another morning with no foreshadowing of the horror that was to come.
The final resolution of the story also goes on to point out how the tragedy did end up bringing people together. And it did have that effect. Suddenly New Yorkers did pull together, united by a common catastrophe, so why not accentuate that by showing how in the morning we were just a bunch of strangers on a train riding into our individual jobs and lives, but in a few hours we would all be connected in a way we could never have imagined.
A large part of the movie takes place with McLoughlin and Jimeno trapped underground and these scenes are the best part of the movie as they keep each other talking, striving to hang in there together. Although the choice of showing Jesus carrying the bottle of water seems out of place, although it fits more with my idea of an Oliver Stone movie than the sentimentality does.
This was the first movie I've ever seen that depicted events that I have personally witnessed. I wasn't at the towers, but I was at work in my office that morning in Manhattan. I was close enough to vividly see the towers burning and then fall. I was close enough that I saw dust covered (some bloodied) people walking up from downtown. Maybe it would be impossible for any movie to convey the true horror of that day, but this one doesn't even come close.
Seeing as how the fifth anniversary of 9/11 is fast approaching, it would have been nice if this movie could have ended with shots of a renewed downtown with building underway on either a memorial or a new tower on the site of the World Trade Center. Unfortunately, thanks to politics and infighting, there is still a gaping hole where the towers once stood, and looking down on the hole stands the black shrouded spectre of the Deutsche Bank building, which remains empty, waiting to be torn down. People have asked whether or not it's too early to make movies about the World Trade Center, which may or may not be the case, but it is certainly well past the point where something needs to be made in the real world there.
