1 Happy St

Last weekend I saw “World Trade Center”, the new Oliver Stone movie. By my count, this is the 3rd mainstream Hollywood movie that centers around the events of September 11th, 2001, following “Fahrenheit 9/11” from 2004 and “United 93” from earlier this year. As a person who has seen all three, I feel I am qualified to tell you that this latest version has been my favorite.

I went into the movie with a certain expectation of what the movie was going to be about after having read some of the reviews. So I knew ahead of time that this was not going to be a movie that focused on conspiracy theories, politics, or religion (at least not entirely). I wasn’t subjected to anyone’s opinion about the Bush administration (like in Fahrenheit 9/11) and I wasn’t given a point of view of a terrorist as they’re about to hijack a plane (like in United 93). Instead, the story revolved around two specific NYC Port Authority cops that became trapped under the buildings after they collapsed, what they did to stay alive, and what their families went through during the time that they were missing. One of the interesting things I learned from World Trade Center was that even while trapped under the rubble, the cops were not aware that the building had collapsed on top of them; they just thought that the lobby that they were standing in had blown up.

Even though the underlying theme of the movie was about 9/11, the story didn’t really focus on any of the details of what we have come to know about that day. I left the theater thinking that the same screenplay could have been used for any story in which there was a tragedy, a group of heroes, and an eventual character triumph. I must say, the angle that Oliver Stone told his story from was quite refreshing.