World Trade Center

Aroview: Powerful and gripping rendering of the plight of two NYC cops who became trapped in the rubble of the collapsing World Trade Center in the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the impact on their friends, colleagues and families.

Dir. Stone unfolds his story with considerable restraint, providing subtle hints of the enormity of events as reports come in of the aircraft attacks, before the disaster accelerates with frightening suddenness. Nic Cage and Michael Pena excel as the two protagonists, stuck beneath metres of twisted metal and masonry fighting back despair and pain, while on the homefront their respective wives (Bello and Gyllenhaal) try to marshall another kind of courage.

Like UNITED 93, this personalises the 9/11 experience by concentrating on the bravery of 'ordinary folk' caught up by the catastrophe, and Stone not entirely convincingly reels back his polemical political tendencies. Indeed, some have seen the film as evidence of a lurch to the political right by the filmmaker. Whatever the truth of this, the film is a thoroughly-crafted suspense drama, boasting uniformly excellent performances.

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