World Trade Center (Oliver Stone, 2006)

[Fletch F. Fletch]

apparently, the 20 minutes of footage shown at Cannes was very well received. From the L.A. Times:

Thunderous Applause for 9/11 Film Preview
By Robert W. Welkos, Times Staff Writer
May 22, 2006

CANNES, France -- The first plane is seen only as a shadow zooming across a skyscraper. The second we hear about only because a policeman learns of it on the phone from his wife.

Instead of showing the now familiar sight of two planes slamming into the twin towers on Sept. 11, this is the way director Oliver Stone announces the attacks in his yet-to-be-released film, "World Trade Center."

Stone attended a preview of the opening scenes of his high-profile historical thriller, which were received with thunderous applause by a packed audience at the Cannes Film Festival on Sunday night.

The 20 minutes of footage ended with actor Nicolas Cage, playing a Port Authority Police sergeant named John McLoughlin, leading his men into one of the towers.

At the sound of a thunderous roar, Cage looks up to see debris and a mushrooming cloud of dust and ash hurtling at him and his men.

The screen goes white. Then, seconds later, we see two terrified eyes staring out from the blackness. It is Cage. Then the screen goes dark.

Stone, in Cannes to be feted on the 20th anniversary of his Vietnam War saga, "Platoon," told the audience that the footage of "World Trade Center" was "incomplete." He went on to compare the heroism portrayed in his latest film with that depicted in the earlier one.

"I think I speak for Charlie [Sheen] and Willem [Dafoe] and Tom [Berenger] when I say that 'Platoon' changed our lives completely," the director said. "We've never been the same….

"In the same vein, I would say that, for me, the struggle … has been to try and make these stories about people who really see it with their own eyes and their ears, whether they were in the jungles of Vietnam or the deserts of Iraq or rubble of the World Trade Center."

Paramount Pictures is scheduled to release the film in August.

[Antoine Doinel]

Though the footage would've have to've been atrociously bad for people to boo a 9/11 film.

[Andre Jurieu]

Though the footage would've have to've been atrociously bad for people to boo a 9/11 film.

Yeah, but it's become quite fashionable to boo Stone.

[rlendog]

I just revisited JFK last night and was struck by the similarities between Garrison's theory that the CIA was responsible for JFK's assassination in order to make billions with the Vietnam war, and the theory that the US planned 9/11 in order go to war with Iraq and make billions. I'm a little disappointed that this will not be a political film. It seems sort of strange coming from Stone, doesn't it?

Probably because the conspiricy theories around 9/11 are even more far-fetched and ludicrous than those around the JFK assassination - so that even Oliver Stone doesn't believe them.

[rlendog]

But it's going to be a long while before I actually watch either United 93 or World Trade Center. I don't think I'm ready to see a Hollywood recreation of the events.

I'm not sure when I'll be ready to watch a fictional 9/11 movie - probably United 93 on DVD some day. But I was rather annoyed to be hijacked by the trailer of this film. It is a sensitive issue (perhaps even more so in the NYC area where I live) so to just show the trailer in advance of another movie without warning seemed rather insensitve - it's not like this movie will lack attention when it is released regardless. But I was happy to see that the trailer looked awful - as some have said above a run of the mill melodrama with a few men stepping up for heroic duty. The movie that the trailer kept reminding of while watching it was that mighty classic of a few years back - Volcano.

[portnoy]

United 93 is pretty execrable, if nothing else for its imposition of the structural elements and iconographic signifiers of horror movies onto putatively realist address.

I'm actually looking forward to World Trade Center, though - after seeing the trailer, there's a thought that the film will be so over-the-top in its engagement with the spectacle of 9/11 that it could serve as a sort of parodic critique of post-9/11 nationalist reappropriations of historical trauma (like, er, United 93).

[tavernier]

United 93 is pretty execrable, if nothing else for its imposition of the structural elements and iconographic signifiers of horror movies onto putatively realist address.

I'm actually looking forward to World Trade Center, though - after seeing the trailer, there's a thought that the film will be so over-the-top in its engagement with the spectacle of 9/11 that it could serve as a sort of parodic critique of post-9/11 nationalist reappropriations of historical trauma.

Whew....Portnoy, are you actually Armond White?

[tavernier]

I can't believe no one has seen this--or bothered to post about it--so let's get it started....with my pal Armond White!

It's actually a fairly lucid review (for White), but the question remains: why oh why does he have to name- and film-drop constantly?

[quote]Oliver Stone does just about everything right in his 9/11 movie World Trade Center, a dramatic recreation of what happened to two Port Authority policemen on that unforgettable day. John McLoughlin (Nicolas Cage) and Will Jimeno (Michael Peña) were among the first-responders when the twin towers were struck. Helping to evacuate Tower One, their squad was trapped when the edifice collapsed. As McLoughlin and Jimeno lay buried in the rubble, Stone envisions the men's desperate survival, the efforts by rescue teams determined to dig out any casualties, and the frantic anxiety of the men's wives, Donna McLoughlin (Maria Bello) and Allison Jimeno (Maggie Gyllenhaal).

It is through Andrea Berloff's screenplay that World Trade Center presents a well-thought-out view of the calamity. Berloff clarifies the event's individual, social and domestic aspects. And Stone, with his practiced elucidation of Americans from various social strata caught up in political turmoil (war, big business, crime), recognizes how those different levels intertwine. This approach, rejecting United 93's bogus docu-realism, never condescends to stroking our fears.

After 9/11, hucksters have had a huge opportunity to trick filmgoers who are unable to distinguish the solemnity of recent history from tacky Hollywood manipulation. During United 93, when I laughed at its preponderance of action-movie cliches, a middle-class woman chided me to “Be respectful!â€

[hearthesilence]

I can't believe this movie got "thunderous applause" at Cannes. Not bad, but not a triumph. (On the upside, maybe they're wrong about Sofia Coppola's new movie, too.)

Before they delete it and replace it with a brief one, here's the full review from The Chicago Reader, which pretty much echoes my concerns.

[quote="Jonathan Rosenbaum"]

** (worth seeing)

“THE HOLOCAUST IS ABOUT six million people who get killed,â€

[tavernier]

I can't believe this movie got "thunderous applause" at Cannes.

Didn't they just show the first 20 minutes at Cannes? If so, that is the best part of the film, so "thunderous applause" doesn't seem so out of bounds.

[Fletch F. Fletch]

Stone interview in Sight and Sound magazine.