World Trade Center

[img1]Oliver Stone's new film World Trade Center is not about a terrorist attack.

It's not about the evil some people are capable of. It's not about Islamic fundamentalism, or the Taliban or students at flight schools who aren't interested in learning how to land. It's about regular people coming together to help each other amid of a terrible tragedy.

Which is why, in the end, World Trade Center is not a very good film.

The film follows Port Authority Police Department Sgt. John McLoughlin (Nicholas Cage) and various other police officers as they begin what seems like an ordinary day on the job. It's not long before the department is receiving sketchy reports about an airplane crashing into one of the Twin Towers, and soon after McLoughlin is leading a team down to Ground Zero to help with the evacuation.

That the audience knows what is about to happen when the police officers do not -- the building they are in is about to collapse -- gives everything a sense of impending doom. Then the building does collapse, and those who survive are trapped inside under tons of rubble.

This story is counterpointed with scenes of the officers' families waiting at home for news of whether their loved ones are alive or not. They wait, and worry, and finally are told that rescue crews have found them. But the survivors are badly injured, and have yet to be pulled from under the collapsed building.

I am not one of those who will argue that it's too soon for a film about Sept. 11. I would love to see a film that had something interesting to say about that day and our reaction to it -- a film that casts things in a new light and gives the audience something to think about.

Even if the filmmakers want to avoid politics -- and World Trade Center strives to be thoroughly apolitical -- there is still room in this story for complexity of character and cloudy motivation, as in any drama. But World Trade Center ignores complexity in favor of oversimplification.

The film is reverent and timid and entirely lacking in conflict. I didn't need to see World Trade Center to feel sympathy for the families of those who died in the attacks. I was already deeply affected viewing the events on television and reading about them in the newspaper. This film has nothing to add to our view of things other than to sentimentalize the events of that day with a sweeping orchestral score and some maudlin dialogue.

Though the film desperately avoids a political perspective it can't help but touch on politics just a little. From news footage of the president to a Marine at Ground Zero saying, "Good people will be needed to avenge this," to the postscript that tells us the same Marine served two tours in Iraq, politics manages to seep into the film, however unintentionally.

This is a real problem, too, because once you allow politics into the story even a little bit there is a responsibly to address that matter more thoroughly. To note that the Marine served in Iraq after being at Ground Zero without going into the illegitimate conflation of Iraq and the War on Terror is lazy at best.

I do not doubt that this film, the first mainstream film about Sept. 11, will be commercially successful. It is difficult to conceive of a film handling Sept. 11 in a less controversial or daring way. It completely lacks any hint of the cynicism that supposedly died the day of the attacks. The film was designed not to offend anyone -- it is full of the kind of uplifting mawkishness that makes people gag when it's not based on a recent tragedy.

It's not that the film is easy to watch, or that it glosses over the horror -- it doesn't, at least not too much, and there are in fact parts that are quite affecting, particularly a short section in which we see broadcast video footage of people around the world looking at their TV screens in horror and mourning in solidarity with their American friends.

Rather, World Trade Center will be successful because it panders to our need to give meaning to a meaningless tragedy. How cynical is that?

World Trade Center opens today.