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HalfMooner
Dingaling
Philippines
15831 Posts |
 Posted - 08/12/2006 : 23:04:43
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My daughter came over this evening to take me to Oliver Stone's new movie, "World Trade Center." Some brief impressions:
Oliver Stone regularly makes movies with heavy doses of paranoid conspiracy theory content. "World Trade Center" is a remarkable exception. Stone has made a movie without politics or speculation thrown in. This is a powerfully moving true story of two men, John McLoughlin and Will Jimeno (played by Nicolas Cage and Michael Pena), both Port Authority cops, and how they and their families coped when the men were trapped in the rubble of the collapsed towers.
The plot itself is really too simple to recount here, rather than too complex.
The courage of all those heroes who rushed into harm's away to save lives when everyone else was running in the opposite direction is shown in subtle but viscerally moving scenes. We see a lot more of the faces of the Port Authority cops than we see of the Towers themselves. And those faces tell us plenty. They show terribly frightened men stopping to assess the in-assessable, before rushing into danger despite their fears.
We never see the first plane crash, but we see its shadow. Stone has been brilliant not only in what he shows, but in what he does not show. The THX soundtrack add considerably to many scenes, as when the men are in a basement, gathering themselves and their equipment with the intention of ascending a tower to evacuate people. The horrific sounds of crashing debris all by itself will keep you on the edge of your seats.
There is great acting throughout. One can sense that everyone involved in making this film wanted it to be as accurate as possible. There was so much real drama in the story of McLoughlin and Jimeno that no exaggeration in the telling could possibly have improved its quality as drama.
"World Trade Center" is not about terrorists, it's about heroes. This movie is not Too Soon. It's barely in time.
[Edit to correct "terrible frightened men" to "terribly frightened men."]
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“Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive. |
Edited by - HalfMooner on 08/30/2006 03:51:52
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Gorgo
SFN Die Hard
USA
5310 Posts |
Posted - 08/13/2006 : 13:17:08 [Permalink]
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Good stuff. It's amazing what people can endure, and what they'll do to help each other.
It was also a reminder to me of how much people loved that kind of destruction, and wanted to visit that kind of destruction on the people of Afghanistan and Iraq. Not to mention the continuation of a failed economic system that ensure many deaths in Louisiana and many other places.
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I know the rent is in arrears
The dog has not been fed in years
It's even worse than it appears
But it's alright-
Jerry Garcia
Robert Hunter
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| Edited by - Gorgo on 08/13/2006 13:19:57 |
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Cookie Parker
New Member
17 Posts |
Posted - 08/30/2006 : 03:35:32 [Permalink]
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| I, too, am amazed at how rescue people run into buildings...but maybe from the information they had on the World Trade Centers, they knew there was no way that the buildings would fall..... |
Blaise Pascal:
To deny, to believe, and to doubt absolutely -- this is for man what running is for a horse. |
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