I watched World Trade Center Saturday night and was disappointed. While the story of the two main characters was certainly compelling, I just walked away with an empty feeling from the film. I learned some things about the survivors - namely the hell they experienced while under the rubble. Seeing one of the guys buried with the two survivors commit suicide after more debris fell was awful. I never knew about all of the fire shooting down the rubble at different intervals after these two men were trapped.
Part of the problem for me was that there were a massive amount of stories to be told on 9/11. To limit the stories to be told in a film was, no doubt, a tough choice. Oliver Stone wisely left his politics out of the film, but it was still a rather vanilla movie IMO.
I'd give it 2 stars out of 5. I'm not a big Nicholas Cage fan to begin with, but he was less annoying in this film than in his others.
I've got to concur with your score and review. If it wasn't just the fact that the film was amazingly bland, flat, and non-offending to the point that whatever possible story, in humanistic and in cinematic dramatic narrative storytelling, is both screwed over...and considering that Paul Greengrass's UNITED 93 was non-political but was able to create an intelligent and artful film...it makes WORLD TRADE CENTER and Oliver Stone both look even more unimpressive.
The fact that the real-life people had total control of their story might factor into this. I'm not trashing them, since its their story, they would have the right to control it, but there is a story to work with dramatically...and that its two men trapped in purgatory on Earth: Darkness and rubble traps them from the light, yet their lives of the "Light" hanging by a string.
Right?
WORLD TRADE CENTER (2006) - ** UNITED 93 (2006) - ****1/2
