World Trade Center (2006)

Starring Nicholas Cage; Directed by Oliver Stone

World Trade Center is a wrenching, gritty, ultimately uplifting depiction of how two New York City Transit cops were trapped in the rubble of the collapsed World Trade Centers on 9/11 awaiting rescue. Oliver Stone keeps his focus simple in this movie; there are no political positions or statements as in his JFK, and the action takes place in a remarkably narrow strip; the trapped officers, their wives and families awaiting word on their fate, and a group of searchers trying to locate survivors in the grim, haunting rubble of the felled towers. 9/11 was a confusing day; no one knew exactly what had happened, reports were garbled, and these attacks seemed to appear out of thin air. The movie echoes this.

Some might call this a “patriotic” movie, or a “celebration of American values.” It’s true that these events take place during a terrible attack on the American psyche. 9/11 will stick in people’s minds like the assassination of John F. Kennedy stuck in the minds of those living in the mid-1960.

But the movie transcends the country (and the circumstances) in which it occurs. The men trapped in the rubble are not thinking of their country: they are thinking of what’s most important in their lives: their wives, their kids, and their families. 9/11 wasn’t a political tragedy: it was a human tragedy. About 2,700 people lost their lives that day, among them over 500 New York City firemen and policemen and transit cops who were called to the scene of the disaster to try to help evacuate the area and assist the injured.

The movie brings home in very sad detail the terrible waiting that the families of the officers had to endure as the hours and days passed after 9/11. For the two families depicted in the movie (based on true events and people), the wait is ultimately rewarded, and the beloved husbands were reunited with their wives and kids and families.

Left unsaid but clearly seen is that a far larger group of people waited out that agonizing time of uncertainty, only to find (eventually) that there was no longer any hope that they’d see their loved ones again, and further, that they would be denied closure since many of their loved ones’ remains were lost amidst millions of tons of ruble and debris which would ultimately take more than a year to excavate and remove. Those 2700+ people were sons, fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, husbands, wives, cousins, and so on. Nicholas Cage is excellent in this film as one of the trapped cops. He gives a restrained, moving performance.

This is a tough movie to recommend. On one hand it’s uplifting and inspiring; on the other hand, it reminds us that we live in a world filled with dangers and uncertainties. The saga of survival of the two cops (two of twenty survivors amidst the rubble) is worth seeing. But be prepared also with having to face anew the sad, violent events of 9/11 that have transformed our world since then.