Neil Nisperos/Staff Writer | Posted: Thursday, August 24, 2006 12:00 am
Watching Oliver Stone?s BWorld Trade CenterC is an intensely visceral cinematic experience that pulls its audience deep into the heart of ground zero and, more importantly, into the hearts of its main characters.
The film, despite the subject matter and a director known for pushing politics in his films, doesn?t focus on the BwhyC of the event. Here Stone is more interested on the humanity of the event and the emotional toll something like Sept. 11 takes on victims and their loved ones. We also revisit the shock and uncertainty many felt on that day.
BWorld Trade CenterC takes its audience into an authentic account of living through and surviving a devastating act of terrorism, in this decade, in an American city.
To say Stone has directed another war film isn?t quite off the mark. As in BPlatoon,C his masterpiece on the Vietnam War, our main characters in BWorld Trade CenterC are faced with the fear that death may come at any moment. But the film is also filled with the way people come together to do what?s right for their fellow man, no matter what the consequences.
Here we have the true story of two New York City Port Authority cops, Sgt. John McLoughlin (Nicholas Cage) and officer Will Jimeno (Michael Peœa), who survived being trapped deep in the rubble of the Twin Towers after they had collapsed.
McLoughlin and Jimeno were among the hundreds of emergency responders who arrived at the scene to save people at the center before the towers fell. The pair were with other Port Authority police officers in the ground level concourse mall area connecting Tower One and Tower Two when the tallest buildings in New York fell.
The picture opens with the work day beginning for the two officers. We see McLoughlin leaving home at 3:20 a.m. in the morning for the commute to lower Manhattan. At the precinct office, we see his morning roll call and are introduced to the dozen officers under his command, including Jimeno and his partner, Dominick Pezzulo.
We follow Jimeno and Pezzulo on their beat in lower Manhattan as they hear a strange rumble from the sky, a slim shadow swooping fast over the billboards, and the sickening boom of a large airliner blasting a gaping hole through the World Trade Center North Tower.
Stone doesn?t waste time getting McLoughlin and a quickly assembled rescue crew down to the chaotic all-too-familiar scene of ash, paper and bloodshed. There?s a stirring line-in-the-sand moment before McLoughlin and his assembled crew go into the building. Once inside, the sound and imagery become sickening, with every groan of steel and concrete from above portending the inevitable.
Through Hollywood effects wizardry, we?re plunged deep inside the carnage of twisted rebar, burning jet fuel and concrete slabs after the sense-numbing spectacle of towers coming down on McLoughlin and his crew.
It?s difficult to watch the agony on McLoughlin?s and Jimeno?s faces as they struggle through the pain of being pinned under tons of concrete. Despite the unimaginable hardship and pain, the joy in the film comes in watching the two men keep each other alive through talking and encouraging each other.
The men Cage and Peœa portray are regular plainspoken guys, and it?s that dynamic of the common man fighting seemingly insurmountable odds that make this picture work.
BYou die, I?m just going to die,C Cage?s McLoughlin tells Jimeno, his mouth parched and encrusted with ash, in an effort to keep the man alive.
In addition to being a great visual artist, Stone is a skilled director at pushing the emotional boundaries of his actors and within the context of his scenes. Witness the village burning scene in his Academy Award winning film BPlatoon,C or Eric Bogosian answering hate-filled calls as a scathing talk radio host in the excellent BTalk Radio.C Stone ratchets up the same emotional intensity to BWorld Trade Center,C with great performances from the main actors.
BWorld Trade CenterC is a study in the close-up shot. Here Stone chooses actors who are expressive with their eyes, because that?s what the camera is forced to focus on. The bodies of our protagonists are largely obscured by concrete.
Peœa is an actor with a Tom Hanks-like knack for creating likable characters with tons of heart and humanity. See his phenomenal turn as the locksmith in BCrash,C where he basically stole the movie. As Jimeno, Peœa deftly channels vulnerability, fear and bravery, and he?s amazing to watch.
Cage, of course, always turns in something interesting and believable. His McLoughlin reminded me of actor Roy Scheider in Spielberg?s BJawsC 8 an earnest cop from New York raising a family with his wife who, through the picture, faces an unimaginable horror. Much of the picture focuses on his face. Check the eyes for the intense pain and overwhelming fear McLoughlin endures. But there?s also the ease at which Cage can channel the necessary hope needed to survive a seemingly hopeless situation.
Maggie Gyllenhaal and Maria Bello also deliver compelling performances as the wives of the two men as they each face the emotional hell of uncertainty. The women realize they have to be strong in front of their children and families, despite the fear and sadness of possibly having lost their husbands. Gyllenhaal and Bello both deliver that dynamic without falling into the typical over-the-top, melodramatic, Lifetime movie-of-the-week mode.
It?s interesting for Stone, whose films have attacked corporate greed (BWallstreetC) and the military-industrial complex (BJFK,C BNixonC) to tackle 9/11 in such a straightforward, nonpolitical way. There are no conspiracy theories flying, and there are none of Stone?s signature cinematic devices such as his use of different film stock and his indulgence in rapid-fire editing, shaky-cam and unconventional angles to convey confusion and psychological imbalance. Stone dials down his cinematography here.
What Stone does successfully convey in the film are the best aspects of the human condition 8 bravery, love, selfless compassion. But we are also witness, fly-on-the-wall style, to the worst people can do to each other 8 the true ugliness and unimaginable horror that war brings to people.
Neil Nispeross can be reached at 737-1059 or nnisperos@lompocrecord.com.