Review of World Trade Center (2006) by Tibor B — 06 Sep 2009

Oliver Stone has been surprisingly tactful in his handling of contemporary situations - here the 9/11 events are brought into the tight focus of a simple disaster genre film, with perhaps even a slight right political bias.

And in W. Bush was almost sympathetically presented as a well meaning idiot, rebelling against daddy, albeit with global consequences. This almost raises the question, why did he take on both projects only to treat them with toothless predictability.

Was there a level of subversion removed from both films? Is it a Hollywood conspiracy in itself? Actually I think the problem is closer to the possibility that Stone needs great material to begin with.

.. something that WTC in particular just doesn't have. The script pushes all the right buttons, but the whole project is bogged down by a reverential gloss. Yes it is a touchy subject, obviously, but even on the level of a simple genre film with one of the Western world's most devastating conemporary events as a backdrop it is not gripping enough, and any emotion it stirs is achieved through a combination of crude manipulation and personal/collective memories of the day itself, not from the narrative.

And that is quite a significant failure.