Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. I know I promised to have this one done today... I keep my promises (sometimes). Here are my thoughts on Oliver Stone's controversial (is there an Oliver Stone movie not surrounded by controversy? Maybe THE HAND...) new film, WORLD TRADE CENTER.
I read an early draft of the script for this film and wasn't too impressed. Thankfully, the shooting draft feels more natural. The script I read had a great structure... you meet some men, the buildings are attacked, you follow the men into the buildings, expecting a big actioneer "Let's rescue everybody!" movie and boom... the buildings fall on top of the men and more than half the picture is you with a couple of these guys as they struggle for survival, pinned underneath tons upon tons of rubble. The structure was good, the idea for the script was good, but the dialogue was god-awful.
Keep in mind, I'm still talking about that early draft. The film I saw had very few of that draft's weaknesses, but all of its strengths.
One thing I really dug about the script was that you never saw the towers. Either they were obscured in ash or something happens to them off camera... or you're in the buildings. I was actually really surprised when I saw the film just how much 9/11 imagery Stone put into the flick. For the most part (about 90% of it) if you see the twin towers it's as we all saw them that day. On television, footage from the street as it was happening. There are a few shots of the towers created for this film, but nothing gratuitous.
I didn't think it'd be a smart move to put the burning towers all over the film, that it'd come off as phony, just an easy way to go for the heart-strings. I was wrong. You know what the most emotional shots of the movie were for me? It wasn't the towers in flames. It wasn't people jumping off the roof. It was the very beginning, when we see New York wake up that morning and from dark to dusk to full daylight we see the World Trade Center buildings once again a part of the New York City skyline. I personally didn't realize how empty the new skyline looks without the towers until I saw the opening of this film.
I'm gonna go off on another small tangent here, but I saw an episode of Penn & Teller's BULLSHIT where they investigated the behind the scenes activity (or lack thereof) regarding the land that the WTC used to stand on. What are they going to do? Build another building? Build a giant monument? Get caught up in indecision until 5 whole years has passed by and it's still just a giant hole in the ground? The episode explored why there was no development and looked at the proposed plans for monuments/museums/buildings to erect on the site. They were all ridiculous. At the end of the episode, Penn & Teller say (paraphrased, of course), "You know what we should build on the site, that would act as a big fuck you to the terrorists... this..." and they showed a picture of the Twin Towers, just as we knew them. I thought it was a good idea then and after seeing the skyline back to what it should be in WORLD TRADE CENTER, I'm completely for that idea.
But now I'm back... so far there hasn't been much of a review here. Sorry... this is a tough one to write. My overall feelings on the film are very positive. It's a good film with some minor flaws. It's very honest and respectful, but doesn't delve into the politics. I had been told that Stone was trying to make a movie that reminded people of how unified we were because of that disaster, to bring the emotion back into it. Right now it's such a huge talking point in politics, with both sides repeating it over and over again. It's become politicized and some may argue that's more of a disgrace to those who died and those who risked their lives for other people than any movie can be. The goal for Stone was to clear away the politics and remind us about the good that America showed that day.
I feel Stone achieved that.
The flaws of the movie... well, there are the funny, surface flaws... like Maria Bello's awful blue contacts... when you have any sort of close look at her you can see her brown eyes underneath giving an eerie effect. Then there are the flaws leftover from the crappy early draft I read.
Once our two leads are trapped, Stone doesn't have the nerve to keep the drama on them. Some of my favorite moments in the film are these two guys trying to keep each other alive. They can't see each other, they can only hear each other. These moments come off as very honest and are really touching. But the decision was made back in that early script that we would follow not only the two Port Authority men as they try to hang on to life, but their families at home. This is a double edged sword for the film because half the time we see the wives of the men and their children I really felt like it made the drama in the rubble better. The other half of the time, it really just goes overboard.
There are dream sequences, as Nicolas Cage and Michael Pena drift in and out of consciousness, that don't work at all for me. These sequence feel forced, convenient and contrived. They could totally be 100% accurate to what these men went through, but on celluloid I don't think it helped the film.
But for every over-the-top drug store moment (you'll know it when you see it) with the wives, there's a scene of one of the mothers praying, her body so slumped and shaking that I almost believed I was seeing what these characters' mothers went through in that day and night when they didn't know if their sons were alive or dead.
All the performances are top notch. Even Nicolas Cage manages to not be distracting. I think if this film gets any sort of nominations we'll see a Supporting Actor nod go to Michael Pena. Jay Hernandez does strong work in the flick, too. Despite my problems with many scenes involving their characters, I also quite liked Maria Bello and Maggie Gyllenhaal. Bello in particular does solid work, even through those awful contacts.
At the end of the movie, there's a lengthy text that tells us what has happened for these families since 9/11 and then there was a listing of all the Port Authority Officers who died that day... If I remember correctly, it was over 80 names.
Almost the entire audience stayed through all these names and when "Directed by Oliver Stone" popped up, the crowd applauded.
It'll be very easy for many people to put themselves above this movie. This isn't dogme 95 real. This isn't a documentary. It is a feature length studio picture, with all the benefits and some of the detriments. To me, this film didn't feel like a cash-in. It doesn't feel like a story that didn't need to be told. For some it will still be too soon. For some it'll be too glossy and not edgy enough. But I don't think anybody will honestly look at this film and see it as a money grab, at least not from the filmmaker's side of things.
Like anything filled with big emotion, it goes overboard sometimes, but the film felt very honest to me. If its goal is to bring the tragedy back from a grey political realm, devoid of emotion, I think it succeeded very well. I know as I was watching the film, I couldn't help but project my own memories of that day and see myself sitting in a house I don't live in now, glued to the TV, like millions of Americans and billions of people around the world.
I really have no idea how this film will do. The audience tonight seemed to be deeply involved with the events unfolding on the screen, but I have no idea if other audiences will be like mine last night.
I know the above was a bit more sombre than my reviews usually are, but you can always go read my TALLADEGA NIGHTS review for the more humorous anecdotes. I'll be back soon with the rest of my Comic-Con interviews and the results of my two contests (Weta's SUPERMAN RETURNS and Sideshow's JAWS statues). Stay tuned for that!
-Quint
Quint
