Stone's 9/11 movie focuses on first responders

Aug 8, 2006 11:19 AM

In Oliver Stone's "World Trade Center," on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, a Port Authority cop named Will Jimeno is doing his everyday job, shooing away prostitutes and panhandlers from the bus terminal, when he hears a loud rumble overhead. The camera pans, not up at the sky, but down the street, to reveal the shadow of a low-flying plane climbing the face of a building. Stone never shows the planes crashing into the Twin Towers. He's letting us know, right from the start, that we will see history unfold as it happened on the ground, from the perspectives of ordinary men and women.
According to a movie review in Newsweek, the policemen portrayed in "World Trade Center" are real guys, and Stone is telling a true story. His heroes are not prepared for the disaster that looms. Most of the cops in the little squad headed by Sgt. John McLoughlin (Nicolas Cage) decline to volunteer to go into the buildings, but a few, including Jimeno (Michael Peña), step forward. The men are obviously frightened, especially when they hear the sickening thump of bodies falling around them. They don't rush boldly into the buildings like action heroes in a disaster movie, but rather move slowly, hesitantly. Still, they do their duty in the face of terrible danger.
This is not the 9/11 story most people would expect from Oliver Stone. There are no conspiracies lurking in the background. "World Trade Center" has no interest in the terrorism. It's explicitly about heroism. It may strike some, at first glance, as a surprisingly conventional film from this controversial filmmaker. And it's the rare Stone film he didn't write himself. But he knew when he first read Andrea Berloff's powerful screenplay that he wanted to make it, and he petitioned for the job.

This is an excerpt from David Ansen's article, "Natural Born Heroes," in the latest edition of Newsweek. To read the entire article, visit www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14095532/site/newsweek/

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