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'World Trade Center': Less is OK, but it's not more

There is much to admire in Oliver Stone's World Trade Center, an impressive, though curiously conventional, look at that momentous day almost five years ago when airplanes flew into Lower Manhattan's Twin Towers and a handful of Port Authority policemen were among those who heroically rushed into the buildings to try to save lives.

Despite its title, this is no definitive account of the events that so changed the course of America, but one small corner of that story. And because it has been brought to our muliplexes by the filmmaker synonymous with cinematic politics and conspiracy tales, surely the most controversial aspect of his movie is the absence of those elements.

Paramount Pictures 'World Trade Center' B- The verdict: An effective, if disappointingly conventional re-creation of one small corner of the 9/11 story. Director: Oliver Stone Starring: Nicolas Cage, Michael Peña, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Maria Bello, Stephen Dorff Run time: 125 minutes Release date: August 9, 2006 Rating: PG-13 for intense and emotional content, some disturbing images and language. See showtimes Behind the scenes •  Will Jimeno had only one thought: Save the people. •  What? An Oliver Stone film with no conspiracy theories? •  Says the director: "The lie has been, Oliver Stone makes up history." On the web Official movie site View the trailer    Trailers require Quicktime Rate 'World Trade Center'   Go see it   Make it a matinee   Wait to rent   Don't bother Voter Limit: Once per Hour View Poll Results

World Trade Center does work as a fitting tribute to two survivors of that day, Sgt. John McLoughlin (Nicolas Cage) and Officer Will Jimeno (Michael Peña), and by extension countless other courageous souls. But the film feels incomplete without some depiction of the perpetrators of the attacks or a link to terrorist activities around the world or at least a mention of the Iraq war we have become stuck in as a result.

What better filmmaker to connect those dots than Stone, the maker of Platoon, JFK and Natural Born Killers? Still, you would not need to know his résumé to sense the director holding back, confusing being careful with being cautious.

The movie begins — as did the superior United 93, which took a different corner of the 9/11 story and turned it into a more satisfying, more harrowing viewing experience — with images of ordinary life that historic Tuesday morning, before our collective complacency was shattered.

And then, in an artful shot that typifies the movie's restraint, an airplane-shaped shadow moves across the downtown New York skyline and the chaos of the day starts in earnest.

McLoughlin and a busload of his men careen down to the World Trade Center, unaware of exactly what has happened, just knowing it is an emergency situation. Asking for volunteers to enter the building and assist in its evacuation, Jimeno and a few others step forward.

They gather a cart of rescue gear and begin their climb when the building collapses around them, leaving them pinned under a mound of concrete, twisted steel and rubble. And for the next hour-and-a-half, they try to stay awake and alive in the hope that someone can find and rescue them.

The screenplay by newcomer Andrea Berloff is undoubtedly well researched and the concourse debris has been recreated with such authenticity that it would be hard not to experience some of what it felt like to be trapped in that dry, dusty, fiery hole. But when the camera cuts away from the transit cops and visits the anguished wives, McLoughlin's stoic wife, Donna (Maria Bello), and Jimeno's pregnant wife, Allison (Maggie Gyllenhaal), World Trade Center turns ordinary, grasping for our heartstrings just as made-for-TV movies invariably do.

Perhaps Stone was damned if he did and damned if he didn't. For there are two signature moments that suggest him taking dramatic license.

In one, a religiously zealous Marine feels called to ground zero with a mission of helping rescuers, and the other is a vision of Jimeno's of Jesus Christ coming to him with bottled water. Both feel like the filmmaker's inventions, yet they are based completely on actual events and recollections.

Once they are immobilized by the rubble, Cage and Peña only have their faces to act with and they both give impressively restrained, empathetic performances. In contrast, Gyllenhaal's more emotional turmoil may be absolutely accurate, but it feels too actorly.

So should you go see World Trade Center? If you feel the need to try to experience what those brave men went through, that is what the film does best. But it is hard to shake the feeling that this is only a small part of the story.

Maybe Stone will one day revisit the subject, consider the wider ramifications and give us the movie that is worthy of his analytic, as well as descriptive, talents.