.MOVIE LISTINGS | MOVIE REVIEW ARCHIVE | THEATER INFO A Narrow Lens Oliver Stone focuses on survival in New York. BY MOLLY TEMPLETON WORLD TRADE CENTER: Directed by Oliver Stone. Written by Andrea Berloff. Based on the true life events of John and Donna McLoughlin and William and Allison Jimeno. Cinematography, Seamus McGarvey. Music, Craig Armstrong. Starring Nicolas Cage, Michael Peña, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Maria Bello, Stephen Dorff, Jay Hernandez and Michael Shannon. Paramount Pictures, 2006. PG-13. 125 minutes. New York City on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, was beautiful. Bright, clear, warm, the kind of day that makes you want to play hooky from work to make the most of the last summery days. Oliver Stone's uncharacteristically subdued World Trade Center begins with everyday images from that lovely morning, set to a subtle but eerie score: Men roll out of bed. Cars pull from parking spots. Policemen joke with each other. Michael Peña and Nicolas Cage in World Trade Center. And for the film's audience, a sense of dread grows. When the shadow of a jet slides along city buildings, we know what it means; we know exactly what's coming, but thankfully we don't have to see a precise recreation of it. Instead, writer Andrea Berloff's screenplay keeps World Trade Center focused on a team of Port Authority cops sent downtown to help before they even really knew what was going on. At ground zero, Officer John McLoughlin led a team of men into the South Tower to rescue people trapped on the 60th floor. They only got as far as the concourse before the building collapsed. McLoughlin and a young officer named William Jimeno were the only men from their group to survive, trapped under tons of metal, glass and concrete. In Stone's film, based on the stories of Jimeno (Michael Peña) and McLoughlin (Nicolas Cage) and their wives, the two couples stand in for everyone aware of the morning's events — a few hoping for rescue, millions more waiting anxiously to find out what happened, and why, and how. Like so many people did, World Trade Center relies on the media to fill in the details. On TVs and radios throughout the film, newscasters describe the mayhem in downtown New York; Bush intones platitudes about resolve; people in other countries watch the footage of the towers falling, hands over their mouths in shock and sympathy; New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani speaks with remarkable eloquence. It's an effective way to put the audience in the moment, but it may not be a moment you want to be in. Parts of World Trade Center are deeply painful to watch: the noises of broken buildings creaking and groaning; the horrible tumble of debris; the sight of a body falling from a sky-high window. And when all is said and done, and Jimeno and McLoughlin have been rescued (thanks in large part to a tenacious ex-Marine, whose soundbite-friendly dialogue strikes a slightly off note), you may find yourself wondering why you watched at all. World Trade Center is a film with a very specific concern, and it's meant to honor the men and women who went into these massive, burning buildings thinking they were going to come out leading other survivors. But as honorable a tale as this is, we know the story. We've seen the towers fall over and over and over again. Did we need to see what it might have been like inside the buildings when that happened? Does it do the victims and survivors a greater honor to recreate them on film? World Trade Center's tight focus on the two cops is a blessing; it keeps Stone grounded, limiting the film's view to what happened to these two men, without speculation on why or how or who was responsible. But it also leaves out much of the day's weight. For one moment, Allison Jimeno (Maggie Gyllenhaal) pauses to look at a hospital wall covered with "missing" posters. Lower Manhattan was wallpapered in those posters for months after 9/11; Union Square Park became an impromptu shrine, with new signs, artwork, candles and memorials appearing daily. Though the stories of Jimeno and McLoughlin have happy endings, the terrible gaps in others' lives, and in New York City, remain. And a film about those who didn't die that day doesn't make the loss of those who did any lighter.
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