oliver stone's world trade center

i just watched oliver stone's world trade center. holy shit, holy shit, holy shit, holy shit. the next time i have a stressed day at work, i'm going to remember those port authority officers that worked at the bus terminal and went over to the world trade center to help evacuate peole and found themselves burried under a collapsed building. and then another building fell down on top of that! watching these police officers and fire fighters dealing with the disaster really puts things in perspective.

while the movie walks you through the events of september 11, it is from the perspective of the port authority officers that got called on the scene. Will Jimeno and John McLoughlin were two of the officers were the last two men rescued alive. actually, i thought they were the only two who were rescued from ground zero, but at the end of the film it mentions that there were numbers 19 and 20. after the buildings collapse and they are trapped, the movie shifts over to their family and introduces us what they went through on that day. it also takes you through their entire experience of being trapped in the rubble and the effort involved in their rescue.

the movie isn't a traditional "arty" oliver stone movie. it doesn't have any of the trippy cinematography known in several of his other films. the special effects are super good because the movie seemed SO realistic. nicholas cage plays seargent john mcloughlin. for the first 10 minutes he kind of annoyed me because of how he looked with his moustache and police cap. it just didn't seem like him. but then i got into the movie and forgot all about it.

the dvd has a very unique commentary as one of it's special features. real life survivor will jimeno and rescuers scott strauss, john busching and paddy mcgee talk along the entire length of the film and discuss the events as they happened. the rescuers also talked about what they were doing exactly at that time since we didn't see it in the film. it's amazing how true to the real events olive stone kept things. only slight differences were mentioned like "i wore a different shirt" or "a different song was playing on the radio". and they described the subtle ways olive stone built in some dialog for the story line. most of the changes involved timing of things that were accelerated to fit into a two hour movie. the movie itself is good to see, but it was really amazing to listen to their audio track in addition.