World Trade Center is a film about heroism, but very different from the earlier United 93. Director Oliver Stone, who experienced and was transformed politically by the context of combat in Vietnam, now celebrates heroes in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 without a left-wing political context. The heroes are Police Sergeant John McLaughlin (played by Nicholas Cage) and Will Jimeno (played by Michael Peña), who are trapped in rubble underneath one of the World Trade Center towers for hours until a Marine looks for survivors and hears a distant metallic sound that indicates their presence. Both McLauglin and Jimeno are assigned to the Port Authority of New York; McLauglin leads a four-person mission to assist in the evacuation of those in the concourse (subway) level of one of the World Trade Centers. However, when both towers suddently implode, debris rains upon them until fragments of metal trap them such that they cannot move. For hours, a living hell unfolds as more debris comes down, fire breaks out, and their buddies die, but Jimeno and McLauglin talk to each other just enough to stay alive when sleep might have meant death. Meanwhile, their spouses in New Jersey become hysterical, worrying about whether they are alive or dead. Five-months-pregnant Allison Jimeno (played by Maggie Gyllenhaal) has the advantage of a large support group, her extended Italian family. Donna (played by Maria Bello) is so stunned that she has very little support; her youngest son even accuses her of not caring about her husband and insists on going to New York to assist. The film excels in capturing the emotions of the trapped duo and their family, enabling filmviewers to sense the horror of the tragedy, which ends when Dave Karnes (played by Michael Shannon), a Wilton, Connecticut, accountant, ejaculates “this country’s at war,” goes home to change into his Marine uniform, goes to Ground Zero, rummages through the debris, hears odd sounds, and rescues the two trapped men. As if to convey the mental and physical breakdowns that loomed, the screen goes blank thirteen times throughout the film, just often enough to indicate that the lapse in viewable film footage is deliberate. Among the political elements are a recognition that there was no advance warning from the federal government, no contingency plans for such an unlikely possibility in New York, brief statements by Mayor Rudy Giuliani and President George W. Bush, and remarks by bystanders about the “bastards” and the characterization of the attack as “war.” As the film ends, the support group for the trapped duo becomes not only the entire NYPD but also volunteer police from as far away as Sheboygan, Wisconsin. Oliver Stone portrays an America united in the struggle to defeat international terrorism, as a title at the end indicates that Karnes served two tours of duty in Iraq, a link between 9/11 and Iraq that the Bush-Cheney clique has been peddling despite evidence to the contrary. The film is dedicated to those in the NYPD who tried their best that day, and alas to the many who died. MH
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