What I Rented - World Trade Center

World Trade Center is respectful and emotional, but tells such a limited story that it ends up becoming repetitive and kind of dull. I suppose this is really the only way to treat the subject of 9/11 since the pain of that day is still so fresh in everyone’s minds, but the movie feels cautious and timid. It only really comes to life at the beginning and at the end.

When the towers fell, two Port Authority Transit Officers, were buried beneath the rubble. Miraculously they survived the initial collapse, and World Trade Center tells the story of how they struggled to stay alive, and how the people of New York came together to help them.

Oliver Stone, who usually bombards the screen with in-your-face visuals, scales back his more stylistic tendencies and relies on many static shots and a straight forward narrative. It’s appropriate for the intimate story he is telling. Unfortunately, he doesn’t scale back on his running time, choosing to tell an hour and a half story for just over two hours.

The opening is haunting as we see New Yorkers going about their daily business, unaware of the tragedy that will befall them. Stone limits the point of view to the men on the ground, so we don’t see any shots of the planes hitting the towers. This strategy works quite well since we are able to truly understand the confusion everyone must have felt that day. The men argue whether or not the second tower was hit, toss around rumours, and do their job without knowing all the details. There’s a great deal of tension and heartbreak as we realize most of these men are heading to their deaths.

Stone’s one big special effects sequence shows the towers collapsing from the inside. It’s terrifying to watch.

Once the tower falls and the men realize they are trapped, the movie halts to a stop. The main problem is that the focus shifts to the men’s wives. Maria Bello and Maggie Gyllenhaal both do a great job, but their storylines are far too similar. Essentially we just watch as both women come to grips with the fact that the men they love might be dead. A scene or two would have been fine, but Stone keeps showing us different ways in which their husbands will be missed. They won’t be able to watch their children grow up, they won’t be able to name their child, they won’t be able to finish the cabinets….

I’m sure this all happened, but I was much more interested in the rescue operation to find the survivors. Once the movie switches gears to that, it comes back to life. Watching the struggle to not only find these two men, but get them out of the rubble is somewhat awe inspiring.

If the story had been told in a shorter time, the fast pace would have at least provided a rhythmic energy that the movie is sorely lacking. Stone seems to be constantly battling with his instinctual urges, and as a result, most of the scenes are muted and downplayed. I can’t help but feel that World Trade Center was made mostly as a reaction to the critical whooping Stone took for the emotional and visual excesses of Alexander. In the end World Trade Center is a fine movie, but one that lacks the passion you would expect from Oliver Stone.

Star Rating **1/2 (out of 4 stars)