Most Helpful Customer Reviews
20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Respect, Mr. Stone, April 2, 2007
I remember Sep 11 like this: I was visiting in Shanghai, came to my hotel room in the evening, not so late, turned on CNN as usual, and saw a plane fly into one of the towers. It took me quite some time to understand what I had just seen. I called my wife and asked her to turn on TV at home. She had not heard yet.
I never felt more American than on that day.
I am German, by the way.
When I heard that Oliver Stone was making a movie about this, I could not believe it. Too early, too monumental, too emotionally loaded, too ideologically simple. This could only become a bad film.
It hasn't. It is a simple story about confusion and heroism and survival. Well done.
You never see a plane fly into anything. You only hear people talk about it, but there are also some who don't believe it. It shows you the segmented vision of people who are near the center. People watching TV in Shanghai probably knew more of what actually happened right at the time than those caught in the middle of it.
Stone stays away from explicit interpretation, he leaves that to the spectator.
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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Very well crafted., December 21, 2006
Oliver Stone has made a very compelling and respectful portrayal
of one of the most inspiring stories of survival in our time.
I've seen a lot of movies in my life and this one is one of the few
that have stayed with me for days after seeing it. I was engaged from
beginning to end. World Trade Center also feels like one of Stone's
earlier films like Salvador or Platoon.Very raw.
There are a few minor flaws. The only complaint I have is the portrayal
of Staff Sargeant Karnes. It simply stands out too much in comparison
to the natural portrayal of the rest of the characters.
This is still a good film and an important film. Anybody who snubs
Stone for not making the conspiracy film they expect from him need to
get over it and see this. If he wanted to make a conspiracy film he
would have. He wanted to spread some hope. How could anyone have a problem with that? Thank you,Oliver!
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11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
It is the story it is trying to tell, January 1, 2007
The main part of the story is about two NYC police officers who are trapped in ruble and are rescued. It would not do justice for the 9-11 victims to tell every story of everybody that died or survived on that day. That is probably 6000 individual stories (survivors and people who died). All of their stories deserved to be told, and hopefully somebody somewhere is creating a website or a book to do just that. Some of them would be interesting enough to be made in a movie, but most likely they would better served by being made into a book that can be read one story at a time without any time boundness and dramatization that are required of movies.
As for this movie, it did the job is was designed to do. Is it a movie I would watch over and over again? No. Is it a movie I would recommend to others to see? Yes.
As for me, I went into the movie without having been exposed to the news coverage of the events day in and day out. I did not know how I would react seeing the dramatization of the "evils" of that day. I was glad that the movie did not focus on the dramatization of the airplanes crashing into the WTC. It was just shown on a TV in the background. I am also glad that it had zero coverage of the Muslims preparing for the day or whatever. They do not deserve the film time.
The movie told the story that it was designed to tell, and it did it very well. I feel sorry for the reviewers who are so exposed to hollywood dramatization that they cannot handle or accept true reality. The movie is the truth, not TV hollywood.
Oh, the marine person was not just thrown in. He was the man who found them, and the film did a very good job of showing his personality and his dedication to his task. Everyone portrayed in that film is a real life hero, not a hollywood actor. They deserved to be treated as such.
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