12A, 130 mins

You have to feel for Oliver Stone. First his bruised ego had to recover from reviews of Alexander that seemed keener to poke fun at Colin Farrell’s bouffant hairdo than to recognise the directorial genius behind the film. Now his perfectly decent 9/11 film World Trade Center has the misfortune to hit cinemas a few short months after Paul Greengrass’s magisterial, sobering account of the same day, United 93.

Comparisons between the two films are unfortunate but inevitable. And the urgency and gravitas of United 93 only serves to highlight the rather conventional, sentimental and Hollywood-friendly approach Stone has employed.

Stone is, on paper, a director ideally suited to tackle the events of September 11, 2001. His attacking, muscular directorial style, his confrontational and outspoken personality and his political awareness would seem to tick all the boxes. But the Stone on offer here is a watered-down version. While I wouldn’t wish for a film that reeked of conspiracy theories and overwrought plotting, the fact that the entire picture is resolutely apolitical makes for an uncharacteristically cautious Oliver Stone movie. That said, there are sequences in the film that are quietly, devastatingly powerful and others as incendiary as the fires at the heart of the wrecked towers.

Background

• World Trade Center

• World Trade Center - Sunday Times review

• Ground Zero, the film set

• Relatives back Stone's 9/11 plot

• Coming soon: 9/11, The Movie

Background

• United 93

Oliver Stone on World Trade Center

What was it like to be carried alive from the ruins on September 11?

Related Internet Links

• 2007 London Film Festival coverage

• Times Online Film Trailers

The aim of the film is laudable — to celebrate instances of selflessness and bravery on a day associated with hitherto unimaginable evil. Based on the accounts of survivors, World Trade Center is the story of the ordinary men and women in the emergency services: policemen, firemen, paramedics and a former Marine (sketched here as a square-jawed all-American hero) who left his job at a Connecticut accountancy firm to help with the relief effort.

The film opens with banal routines on the morning shift of the Port Authority Police Department. When news of the first strike arrives, officers head downtown. Sergeant John McLoughlin (Nicolas Cage), the cop in command, is the only member of the team whose drawn, stony countenance reveals that he immediately realises the possible extent of the horror. For the others, the realisation comes gradually. Excitable phone chatter gives way to a mute incomprehension, then an agonising, empathetic dread as the plight of those trapped in the towers becomes clear.

We’re all familiar with the sickeningly neat way the first tower telescoped in on itself. But Stone puts his characters, and his camera, on the inside, evoking with a horrible clarity the seconds it took to turn a landmark building into a mass of rubble. Two police officers survive, and we keep them company in their tomb of masonry and lung-clogging dust.

Meanwhile, the film intro-duces the officers’ families, specifically their implausibly groomed and manicured wives. The Hollywood gloss applied to the female characters is a little disappointing, but more of a problem is the fact that we catch not a glimpse of the loved ones of officers who fell. The aim of the film may have been to chisel some kind of uplifting tale of heroism out of the tragedy, but given the number of casualties of the attack it seems a little disingenuous to deny the fallen officers, introduced as equally important characters, their mourning.

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