World Trade Center (2006)

Oliver Stone hasn't exactly had an easy ride over the last couple of years.

First there was the critical mauling that Alexander received - and rightly so! It was a mauling that even a hastily compiled Director's Cut, released on DVD day-and-date with the theatrical version, couldn't escape. (Footnote: apparently yet another version - the Unrated Final Cut - is due to hit HD-DVD at the end of next month - Enough already!)

For lesser directors, the failure of Alexander, both critically and in terms of the box office, might have been the end of a career, but in 2006 Stone managed to get another gig: World Trade Center. In doing so he produced what this viewer thinks is one of the finest films in what is a worthy canon of work that any director would be happy to own. For some reason critics (and the British critics in particular) don't appear to have been impressed, although whether this is because of the director's politics or the film itself is hard to determine.

In any other year I believe World Trade Center would be a shoo-in for several oscar nominations. After all it meets all the requirements: Great acting performances? Check. Based on real life events? Check. Ridiculously sentimental story of hope overcoming adversity? Check. So what happened in 2006 that upset the apple-cart where awards and rave reviews were concerned? A 'small' and unique film, United 93, documenting different events that occurred on that same fateful day on September 11th 2001, hit the box office first, leaving the bigger, more 'traditional' picture with nothing but 'me-too also-ran' reviews.

United 93 is an astonishing film. It provides a more visceral experience, primarily through its machinations of making everything real time, refusing to add any dramatised emotional elements, and dropping the viewer right bang in the middle of the action. But that doesn't make World Trade Center a bad film, and for a director who's too often been criticised for 'ignoring the facts' on his past releases, it's somewhat ironic that most of the criticisms aimed at World Trade Center appear to centre around criticisms that the events are over-sentimentalised, or that scenes have been invented as is obvious from their high sacharine content. If nothing else, this HD-DVD release of the film, which features so much input from the Port Authority employees who were involved in the rescue attempts made on 9/11, should force those critics to realise they've just done the literary equivalent of putting a size 10 jackboot in their mouths. There are many accusations one could throw at World Trade Center, but factual inaccuracy is not one of them.

The film tells the story of the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Centre, as seen from the highly personalised viewpoints of two men: rookie Port Authority policeman Will Jimeno and his chief John McLoughlin. Jimeno and McLoughlin were the 18th and 19th of 20 survivors pulled out of the Two Towers wreckage that claimed an estimated 3000 lives. The film's first 20 minutes follow very much the traditional disaster movie clichés, setting the background to the big disaster itself. As the film opens we see an alarm clock as it ticks to the 3.30am position and sounds off - the start of a typical day for those working for the Port Authorit Police Department on the early shift and who need to start the hour long commute before the normal congestion starts. We see New York coming to life as the working day begins, and then the disaster itself, albeit played very much in the background: the shadow of a plane crosses a block of flats, a long shot of the Twin Towers shows billowing smoke, officers arrive to see a body falling from one of the towers, and groups of people sat in bars and offices watching the event unfold on TV.

With the traditional disaster movie first act in place, the film switches gear, becoming a much more character-driven piece, focusing on three trapped men from the police department who have been caught inside one of the towers. We switch between initial scenes of the three officers, trapped below the rubble, and witness the early heroic death of one of them before switching to the distraught wives waiting back home. Stone is not attempting to send any kind of political message here, or even to present a 'Towering Inferno' -like disaster movie remake for the noughties, albeit one with a lower celebrity count. What he's telling is the story of two 'ordinary Joes' who, like many others that day, became heroes when circumstances dictated that they needed to.

World Trade Center is by no means an easy film to sit through. It does, however, have a more upbeat, life-affirming ending than the afore-mentioned United 93, and for those of us with no personal connection to anyone involved in the events of that day, tells us many new things about how 'ordinary people' came together and achieved something remarkable.

It's pointless going into details of the cast performances, since they're uniformly excellent. Nicolas Cage is, in my view, an under-rated actor (OK, so I haven't seen the remake of The Wicker Man that he stars in and which, by all accounts, could change my opinion) and here is never less than outstanding in an oscar-worthy performance as the unemotional leader John McLaughlin who comes to realise he's still desperately in love with his wife, despite having fallen into a bit of a rut after raising four children. Maggie Gylenhaal (another seriously overlooked actress) deserves special mention for her performance as Will Jimeno's wife, delivering a moving, heart-breaking performance as a fiery, temperamental woman seven months pregnant trying to hold everything together for her young daughter when she thinks her husband is dead. Michael Pena, as Will, shows that Crash wasn't a one-off performance and that we'll be hearing and seeing more of this actor in the future, while Jay Hernandez, as Will's doomed best buddy, is barely recognisable from his role in the Hostel movies, and shows he has the acting chops to match his 'pretty boy' looks.

The music soundtrack is worthy of special mention here too. A slow, melancholic piano motif is used throughout the film, where it might have been easier to go with something more orchestral, and to over-emphasise the use of trumpets. The music is a thing of simple but elegant beauty, that powerfully underlines the events we're witnessing without in any way distracting from them.

World Trade Center is destined to become a reference standard showcase for the HD-DVD medium. The picture is absolutely stunning, the sound all-encompassing, and the film is presented in a double-disk format (which explains the slightly higher than normal asking price) enabling several hours of extra features to be included. All HD-DVDs carry a format trailer boasting of 'more extra's on the HD-DVD format' - a promise which, until now, has proven to be entirely false. World Trade Center finally delivers on that promise, with the added benefit of presenting all the extra's in 16:9 1080i high definition instead of the more usual 'ported from the standard DVD' 480p format.

First up on the extra's front are two commentaries. The first commentary is a respectful, informative commentary from the director, Oliver Stone. Stone is honest about the criticisms he's faced, and humble about his own accomplishments and the final film. The second commentary features four of the Port Authority staff featured in the film, including one of the two main characters, Will Jimeno. This will not be an easy track to listen to for anybody local to the area or who lost loved ones in the disaster. Clearly the men are still fairly raw (one suspects that McLaughlin's absence is down to this formerly 'unemotional' man's inability to recall events without breaking down in tears) but Jimeno's optimism and likeability shine through the chat track, and his motives for wanting the film made are clearly genuine. Those critics who complained about the ridiculousness of a 'Jesus' vision scene in the film, or of the overly-sentimental 'I love you' farewells spoken out in the dark should be forced to listen to this chat track. Jimeno is a larger than life 'I always wanted to be a cop. I love my job' character who reveals that, if anything, the sentimentality and heroism we've just witnessed in the main featured were played down compared to what really happened.

The 53 minute Making of, split into three sections, does an excellent job of explaining the history of the film project and the continual on-set involvement of the two men depicted in the picture, and is accompanied by a second 54 minute documentary Common Sacrifice covering the real world 'rescue' and 'recovery' of the film's two main characters. It focuses on the real people that that we've seen depicted by actors in the film. The second documentary in particular, while being life-affirming and inspirational, is not easy viewing and it's obvious that McLaughlin in particular is struggling to cope emotionally with the after-effects of the disaster.

Building Ground Zero, at 25 minutes, shows the detail and planning that went into recreating the disaster site in the Californian film studios - a recreation so accurate that the real world Port Authority staff who visited the set found themselves suffering real time flashbacks. A 12 minutes Special and Visual Effects featurette gives insight into the incredibly seamless CGI and effects work that was worked into the movie, while the 24 minute Oliver Stone on New York is really the director talking about his upbringing and how it impacts his film-making. A 23 minute Q&A with Oliver Stone is an interview with Mark Kermode that was filmed as part of a series of David Lean lectures at BAFTA last year and is perhaps most interesting for Stone's comment that he'd like to revisit 9/11 and make a very different film from the one he's just made. A cinema trailer, TV spot advertisements and a high definition photo gallery round out the whole package.

World Trade Center is available on region-free US-sourced HD-DVD from several online import suppliers. For those who prefer to pay higher prices and wait longer to 'Buy British' the UK region free HD-DVD release is currently scheduled for 29th March, and the title is also available on import on Blu-Ray (which is not region free). A special edition Region 2 DVD will be released on 29th January. World Trade Center is worth purchasing whatever your format of choice, but the reason I've launched this new HD-DVD blog with this specific title is because I think it stands out as a quality HD-DVD presentation that shows the substantial improvements HD-DVD can have over standard definition DVD, providing a good reason for becoming an 'early adopter' of the format.