I need to preface any thoughts on WORLD TRADE CENTER with a disclaimer. I know from experience that subject matter and style are inseparable to some people, i.e. if you don’t like SCHINDLER’S LIST, some are going to assume that therefore you hate holocaust victims.
I have the utmost respect for officers John McLaughlin and Will Jimeno, and others like them who have held out, trapped under rubble, through various injuries, until help came. I also admire the skills and determination of those who found them.
The issue at hand, however, is whether that inherently makes a movie about them, starring Nicolas Cage and directed by Oliver Stone, worth seeing. Another issue is whether or not it’s “too soon” to have a movie about a recent tragedy like 9/11.
Funnily enough, shortly after 9/11, I thought that there probably could be a great heroic movie about it. At the beginning of this year, I did not want to see UNITED 93, about doomed passengers, but very much wanted to see WORLD TRADE CENTER, about heroes who lived. Having seen both, my expectations have utterly flipped. UNITED 93, I thought, was a timely reminder that a war talked about in sweeping terms of good versus evil is actually fought by scared, ordinary people pushed into desperate measures. On the other hand, I think it may well be Too Soon for WTC — the big, predictably made, star-driven Hollywood movie. You can do that sort of thing with more distant wars like Vietnam, but Hollywoodizing recent memories is not so easy to do, and make it work.
The first part of the movie works, as McLoughlin (Cage) and Jimeno (Michael Pena) run into the collapsing building. But after that, what we’re seeing boils down to this: Two guys lie down for an hour and a half, then people come and pick them up.
Again, I’m not belittling the real struggle of the real life guys. I know they weren’t actually just lying down for a couple of hours. But the actors are. Drama tends to require proactive protagonists, and these characters don’t actually do anything to affect the plot except keep from falling asleep. The one proactive character in the movie is Dave Karnes (Michael Shannon, whom you’ve seen in a ton of stuff but will remember more clearly now), an office worker who, when he sees the footage on TV, re-enlists in the Marines and heads striaght to New York, where he takes the initiative and finds McLoughlin and Jimeno. We later learn he did two tours in Iraq afterwards. THAT’S the guy I want to see a movie about. However, he’s a right-wing fundamentalist Christian, which means that while you can have him as a supporting character, the odds of someone like OIiver Stone making him the hero of his own movie are up there with Mel Gibson directing “The Joe Lieberman Story.”
When Karnes walks through the rubble of Ground Zero at night, it doesn’t help the film’s veracity that it reminds one of Michael Biehn trudging through the TERMINATOR futurescape. Or maybe Ground Zero did look exactly like that — I wasn’t there — but watching this felt like looking at a movie set. Similarly, the underground stuff reminded me of Universal Studios’ Earthquake ride, especially when carefully aimed jets of flame burn through and narrowly miss our trapped twosome. The one trademark Oliver Stone touch is a psychedelic hallucination of Jesus Christ (Steve Chappell) offering bottled water, but apparently Jimeno really had such a vision. (There will always be pain and suffering, there will always be evil in the world…)
I’ve neglected thus far to mention all the scenes of the wives (Maria Bello and Maggie Gyllenhaal) at home worrying, and I wish Stone had neglected them too. Scene like this are always the same in every movie — there’s even a flashback to McLoughlin being a carpenter that could have been inspired by a very similar one in THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST, for goodness’ sakes — and Bello’s neon blue contacts are really quite distracting in that they don’t look like a natural human pigment (Arrakis. Dune. Desert planet.)
Because Stone can’t be subtle, there’s also lots of slo-mo and orchestral score to stress how IMPORTANT everything is. Folks like the reviewers at Movieguide who love their entertainment didactic will be very pleased, but I’m not so sure you will be.
Pena’s acting is very good, as is Shannon’s. With Cage, it’s tough to get past the affected accent, but he’s pretty good too.
I could do without the movie, though.
NOTE: Because of pernicious spamming on this particular entry, it is now closed to comments. The original non-spam comments appear below:
Comments
Well, if it wasn’t Oliver Stone Conspiracies, I’m not surprised it was Overdone Hollywood Theatrics instead…
Posted by: David N. Scott at August 9, 2006 4:26 PM
Stupid hippy liberal!! Unpatriotic a-hole!
Posted by: NutJobby at August 9, 2006 5:46 PM
despite agreeing with certain aspoects of Stone’s outlook – I have never thought much of any of his movies – (including Platoon) looks like this one clunks in exactly the same way as most of his…
Producers, stop giving him money!
Posted by: offpat at August 10, 2006 1:45 AM
SSgt. Dave Karnes did not ‘re-enlist’ in the Marines on 9/11 nor did he fly down to the site. He, like Sgt. Thomas, suited up with what they owned and drove down to the site.
Posted by: Milton Solorzano at August 10, 2006 2:29 AM
Milton – I apologize if I got the facts wrong. The movie does not specify the mode of transportation, but implies a swiftness of arrival I would not expect from driving. It also strongly implies that he did indeed re-enlist, from a civilian job.
If this is wrong — then the movie is wrong, or at least misleading.
But it proves my point that a movie about him would be more interesting.
Posted by: LYT at August 10, 2006 2:44 AM
Man, I totally agree with your review. I am proud that we have a movie about 2 of the guys who actually made it out, but I found myself drifting off in the middle of the story. I think I was expecting that the movie would focus on more characters, more events leading up to the collapse of the buildings. It seems like they just sped through that part. I just think that for a movie about such a huge event, focusing on only 2 main people (heroic & outstanding as they were) really limited the scope of the movie. I wanted more characters & depth – just my opinion.
Posted by: linigh at August 10, 2006 8:24 PM
The movie shows clearly that Karnes left his office job in Wilton, CT to go down to the WTC site. While there he received a call from work asking when he was coming back.
Posted by: Biff at August 14, 2006 9:49 AM
Karnes did not reenlist to go to the WTC site. Instead he put on his old USMC gear, he left the marines 3 years earlier after 20+ of service. He did drive from connecticut. After the experience, he reenlisted in the Corps…
Posted by: Joel at August 18, 2006 2:44 PM
At least Oliver Stone did not go on one of his conspiricy thoeries again. A movie about Kearnes would have been better then this but how can you make an exciting movie about 2 guys stuck in a hole for 20 hours.
Posted by: John A. Miller at August 21, 2006 10:48 AM
For a long time no one could find Thomas.
It is interesting to note, that just recently Thomas was revealed to be a black man, not white!
Posted by: Gomar at September 28, 2006 10:34 AM
Stone has let himself down bigtime! Understandably 9/11 was a huge blow to the American psyche, and making a film about it a few years later could be problematic….Watching two guys stuck under rubble with carefully planned pyrotechnics going off every now and then, was agonizing to watch as the only dialog the two shared was convincing each other not to fall asleep! The only decent character was Shannon, even though his right wing Christian attitude was ill founded, equating that “payback” for the towers falling was avenged by him serving two terms in Iraq! Missing the point that not all Iraqis were to blame for 9/11! Don’t get me wrong I am pro war…but this film doesn’t help uneducated American’s views the Middle East! Stones trademark “hippie” sequence with Jesus offering a water bottle was annoying and funny, just goes to show religious indoctrination is still in force in Hollywood! If any one calls me unpatriotic you would be right because I am English, so don’t bother, it was a sad day for everyone as it was the staging ground for war, but come on cant you guys think of any better scripts!!
Posted by: J-smoke at October 11, 2006 9:13 AM
Man, I also agree totally with your review, and don’t pay attention to the jerks that say you are a communist or whatever because you didn’t like the movie’s style.
The start of the movie was great, until 2 minutes after they were buried. The rest sucked. I mean, you can’t ignore basics of making a movie just because it deals with powerful subject matter. It was boring, lacked dimension, and felt like a really, really bad made-for-tv movie.
Posted by: Anonymous at September 15, 2007 5:15 PM
Well, if it wasn’t Oliver Stone Conspiracies, I’m not surprised it was Overdone Hollywood Theatrics instead…
Stupid hippy liberal!! Unpatriotic a-hole!
despite agreeing with certain aspoects of Stone’s outlook – I have never thought much of any of his movies – (including Platoon) looks like this one clunks in exactly the same way as most of his…
Producers, stop giving him money!
SSgt. Dave Karnes did not ‘re-enlist’ in the Marines on 9/11 nor did he fly down to the site. He, like Sgt. Thomas, suited up with what they owned and drove down to the site.
Milton – I apologize if I got the facts wrong. The movie does not specify the mode of transportation, but implies a swiftness of arrival I would not expect from driving. It also strongly implies that he did indeed re-enlist, from a civilian job.
If this is wrong — then the movie is wrong, or at least misleading.
But it proves my point that a movie about him would be more interesting.
Man, I totally agree with your review. I am proud that we have a movie about 2 of the guys who actually made it out, but I found myself drifting off in the middle of the story. I think I was expecting that the movie would focus on more characters, more events leading up to the collapse of the buildings. It seems like they just sped through that part. I just think that for a movie about such a huge event, focusing on only 2 main people (heroic & outstanding as they were) really limited the scope of the movie. I wanted more characters & depth – just my opinion.
The movie shows clearly that Karnes left his office job in Wilton, CT to go down to the WTC site. While there he received a call from work asking when he was coming back.
Karnes did not reenlist to go to the WTC site. Instead he put on his old USMC gear, he left the marines 3 years earlier after 20+ of service. He did drive from connecticut. After the experience, he reenlisted in the Corps…
At least Oliver Stone did not go on one of his conspiricy thoeries again. A movie about Kearnes would have been better then this but how can you make an exciting movie about 2 guys stuck in a hole for 20 hours.
For a long time no one could find Thomas.
It is interesting to note, that just recently Thomas was revealed to be a black man, not white!
Stone has let himself down bigtime! Understandably 9/11 was a huge blow to the American psyche, and making a film about it a few years later could be problematic….Watching two guys stuck under rubble with carefully planned pyrotechnics going off every now and then, was agonizing to watch as the only dialog the two shared was convincing each other not to fall asleep! The only decent character was Shannon, even though his right wing Christian attitude was ill founded, equating that “payback” for the towers falling was avenged by him serving two terms in Iraq! Missing the point that not all Iraqis were to blame for 9/11! Don’t get me wrong I am pro war…but this film doesn’t help uneducated American’s views the Middle East! Stones trademark “hippie” sequence with Jesus offering a water bottle was annoying and funny, just goes to show religious indoctrination is still in force in Hollywood! If any one calls me unpatriotic you would be right because I am English, so don’t bother, it was a sad day for everyone as it was the staging ground for war, but come on cant you guys think of any better scripts!!
Man, I also agree totally with your review, and don’t pay attention to the jerks that say you are a communist or whatever because you didn’t like the movie’s style.
The start of the movie was great, until 2 minutes after they were buried. The rest sucked. I mean, you can’t ignore basics of making a movie just because it deals with powerful subject matter. It was boring, lacked dimension, and felt like a really, really bad made-for-tv movie.