World Trade Centre
Two Port Authority police officers, John McLoughlin (Cage) - a veteran of the 1993 WTC bombing, rushes into the breach on 9/11 knowing that no adequate plan exists to deal with a catastrophe of this magnitude - and Will Jimeno (Pe?a) - a rookie [with] a desire to prove himself on the job and also distinct shadings of fear, both the worry that he’ll mess up and, as the hours go by, a much deeper terror.
The pair become trapped deep in the rubble of the collapsed towers where they had gone to help with the evacuation after the first plane hit. Starting before dawn on Sept. 11 and covering roughly the next 24 hours, the narrative switches back and forth from the men to their families, in particular the wives, who spend agonized hours waiting for news of their husbands’ fates. [New York Times]
- Director:
- Oliver Stone (Platoon, JFK, Nixon, Natural Born Killers, Any Given Sunday, The People Vs Larry Flynt)
- Writer:
- Andrea Berloff
- Cast:
- Nicolas CageMaria BelloMaggie GyllenhaalMichael Pe?a
Reviews & comments
Good, far from great. Needless sappy-ness.
Variety
pressYields lovely and touching moments but proves a slow-going, arduous movie experience, if more uplifting than Universal's earlier "United 93"...
The New York Times
pressIn the Sept. 11 of “World Trade Center,” feeling transcends politics, and the film’s astonishingly faithful re-creation of the emotional reality of the day produces a curious kind of nostalgia. It’s not that anyone would wish to live through such agony again, but rather that the extraordinary upsurge of fellow feeling that the attacks produced seems precious. And also very distant from the present. Mr. Stone has taken a public tragedy and turned it into something at once genuinely stirring and terribly sad. His film offers both a harrowing return to a singular, disastrous episode in the recent past and a refuge from the ugly, depressing realities of its aftermath...
Rolling Stone
pressOliver Stone has made a cautious, earnestly factual and emotionally unassailable film. What he has not made is an Oliver Stone movie... 'World Trade Center' takes the point of view of two men with no clear idea of what's going on. "What happened to the buildings?" asks Jimeno when his rescuers lift him out of the hole. The deeper implications of those words raise hot-button issues that Stone has tabled for now. His film is undeniably affecting, but you leave it wanting more...
Empire Magazine
pressEven without his box of political tricks, Oliver Stone remains the foremost cinematic shrink for America’s distress...
BBC
presspolar opposite to the nerve-jangling leanness of Paul Greengrass's United 93. It's a stodgy, sappy, intensely earnest film marinaded in the fuzzy morality of the Hollywood mainstream. Despite being true, it feels fictional: a distillation of human values rather than an objective chronicle. That's not necessarily a bad thing; to tell the truth, it's rather comforting
Variety
pressYields lovely and touching moments but proves a slow-going, arduous movie experience, if more uplifting than Universal's earlier "United 93"...
The New York Times
pressIn the Sept. 11 of “World Trade Center,” feeling transcends politics, and the film’s astonishingly faithful re-creation of the emotional reality of the day produces a curious kind of nostalgia. It’s not that anyone would wish to live through such agony again, but rather that the extraordinary upsurge of fellow feeling that the attacks produced seems precious. And also very distant from the present. Mr. Stone has taken a public tragedy and turned it into something at once genuinely stirring and terribly sad. His film offers both a harrowing return to a singular, disastrous episode in the recent past and a refuge from the ugly, depressing realities of its aftermath...
Rolling Stone
pressOliver Stone has made a cautious, earnestly factual and emotionally unassailable film. What he has not made is an Oliver Stone movie... 'World Trade Center' takes the point of view of two men with no clear idea of what's going on. "What happened to the buildings?" asks Jimeno when his rescuers lift him out of the hole. The deeper implications of those words raise hot-button issues that Stone has tabled for now. His film is undeniably affecting, but you leave it wanting more...
Empire Magazine
pressEven without his box of political tricks, Oliver Stone remains the foremost cinematic shrink for America’s distress...
BBC
presspolar opposite to the nerve-jangling leanness of Paul Greengrass's United 93. It's a stodgy, sappy, intensely earnest film marinaded in the fuzzy morality of the Hollywood mainstream. Despite being true, it feels fictional: a distillation of human values rather than an objective chronicle. That's not necessarily a bad thing; to tell the truth, it's rather comforting
Good, far from great. Needless sappy-ness.
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