I have not seen this movie, but with a review like this one from Cliff May, I will definitely go.
His film, World Trade Center, may be the most powerful work I’ve ever seen on the screen.
It should be required viewing for every American. It reminds us what we are fighting against (so many people have forgotten).
It reminds us what we are fighting for (so many people don’t seem to understand how precious America is).
Uh oh, JPod writing a review in the New York Post has a different view:
Stone's production team has done a masterly job of recreating the surreal sights and sounds and emotions of that day - the sheets of paper pouring from the sky onto Lower Manhattan, the sound of millions of tons of metal in distress, and most powerfully a literal tsunami of debris that rushes toward McLoughlin, Jimeno and the three cops with them who did not make it out alive.
Because the TV news media decreed nearly five years ago that they would no longer show moving images of 9/11, Stone's recreation has immense power. It is impossible not to cry during the course of this movie. But that doesn't make "World Trade Center" exceptional. Truth to tell, the movie really isn't very good.
Much of the picture is taken up with the suffering and anxiety of the wives and families of McLoughlin and Jimeno, and the ultra-histrionic Stone simply has no idea how to film an ordinary scene in which four people sit in a house together. Instead, he slaps together clichés from World War II pictures and Lifetime's "movies for women" into an unconvincing, clichéd lump.
The movie ends with Nicolas Cage speaking a narration about how on 9/11 we faced adversity but also came together as a people and did nice things for each other. That certainly did happen, and America's emotional unity was something extraordinary to behold, but that is not what 9/11 was about - 9/11 was a day of barbaric mass murder, not a day of hope.
"World Trade Center" can't hold a candle either artistically or thematically to "United 93," the grueling and overpowering masterpiece released earlier this year that showed it all - the monstrous terrorists, the confused responders and the unimaginable heroics of those who forced the plane down before it could hit Washington.
"United 93" ends with a plane crash. "World Trade Center" ends with a smiling child. One wonders what Stanley Kubrick would have made of that.
Uh oh again. Just when I was about to say "forget it," just another Oliver Stone propaganda piece, another voice in the "Go See" category is heard from another who was at the screening. John Miller says:
5) When the movie ended, the theater was incredibly quiet; I think a lot of people will be affected by this film the way Cliff and Cal Thomas have been. 6) World Trade Center deserves a big box office. The release is August 9. Go see it.
So the men have spoken, but what about the women, how did they take the movie. Kathryn Jean Lopez compares Flight 93 and World Trade Center, and thinks
Oliver Stone delivers what United 93 didn’t. His new movie, World Trade Center , which I saw in preview last week, is about us. It’s exclusively about the good guys. It’s about us when we’re heroic (those of us who are). It’s about us when we’re scared. It’s about us when we wake up in the middle of the night to go to work, listening to 1010 WINS (if you’re from New York City, there’s something extra-personal about this movie, and those attacks). It’s about us when we’re freaked-out kids who say mean things to our freaked-out mothers. It’s about a Marine who will drop everything to return to service. It’s about a team of rescue workers who will leave no man to die. It’s about our deep, abiding faith in God. It’s about our love of family, and the work we’ll do for them, and the joy they bring us. It’s about the irreplaceable, incomparable bond between a man and wife. It’s about the united outrage we feel when Americans are murdered. It’s about why we fight.
Her concluding thought makes me very interested in seeing the movie if it conveys this powerful message:
In World Trade Center we see how Americans react to evil. It’s an evil we should not forget — and it’s an evil we should call by name. Thank God there are people willing to run into burning towers and Marines willing to report for duty. Thank God there is goodness to prevail in the world.
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