It may be the darkest day in our modern history.  What happened on September 11th was a tragedy, and in reviewing Oliver Stone's World Trade Center from the perspective of the horror fan, I do this with no intended disrespect to anyone living or deceased.  It is all the same, undenyable - that what took place - if you boil it down to the bare reality of it all - was absolutely the epidemy of horror.  The velocity with which those planes hit.  Within them were people like you and me - shredded to specks and showered over ten city blocks.  Within the 2-dimensional image of the burning towers on the television screens were real people like you and me - working at desks on a Tuesday morning and then suddenly stumbling about a cracked open floor writhing in flame.  In a day and age of such spectularism and equal voyuerism - what rained down onto those city streets was beyond fathomable - and the level of respect shown for human life thereafter immense and appropriate.  So I relate to the horror of this event with a chill in my bones - for the deeper you search it - the more terrible and exploitative it becomes to accurately discuss it.

Have you ever been in a warehouse or some environment where pipes or steel or glass smacks the ground and shatters with a wail?  Its loud.  Its deafening, because these things bear a lot of weight.  More pounds than we can imagine hovered over the heads of countless emergency personnel and evacuating tower employees.  Trapped in elevator shafts, packed in staircases, surrounded by immovable cement and steel, people shifted about, until ultimately the towers collapsed, and one hundred stories of the largest buildings in the world came down upon their heads.  Barely anybody came out of it alive.  World Trade Center is the story of two of those survivors.

Oliver Stone who can definitely put a spin on historical events, stayed incredibly away from the realm of opinion in World Trade Center, limiting any political or vengeful point of view to one word, as spoken by an officer watching from a diner in Illinois.  "Bastards..."  The rest of the film is a very respectful and detail-skirting piece, which really is about what happens to all the families on this day - the shock of seeing it happen, the waiting and not knowing, the hoping, the lost and the found.  A massive emotional moment of excruciating pain and despair between loved ones.

Those who know the details of this horrific event know that everything that was up there - all of those people that fell, shot out, or jumped from the building, came down to the streets below.  There were body parts, and pools of blood.  This wasn't a movie.  This was real, and it doesn't need to be displayed on screen.  Stone does a good job of not showing the plane crashes - implying it with a shadow passing over the streets - nor does he show the impacts.  The few seconds of film spent peering up the flaming World Trade Center towers is enough to make you gasp.  The rest of the film is spent trapped below rubble while hope takes over and families squirm in pain.

Horror fans will feel that familiar empathetic adrenaline rush when the bodies of the fallen hit the streets outside with a mind numbing, high velocity crack.  The tension of that morning is touched upon and felt as well, and when the buildings collapse, you can hear masses of screaming - you can see a little better what might have happened to those standing at the tower base, and of course, within the rubble, people try to survive while being crushed, burned, and broken.  In the end, when the two survivors are lifted out of the rubble and into the open air, you almost inhale for a breath of fresh air.  In the hospitals after the calamity, they are reunited with their families, and the words shared are as desperate and delicate as any couples youve ever watched reunited on screen.  Maybe because it was real.

Also of note, what attracted me to see this film in the first place was the late Debra Hill.  Anyone who grew up on Carpenter films knows Debra's name in tandem, as she was involved with producing and writing some of our favorite films to date.  She was working on World Trade Center at the time of her death, and was extremely passionate about making this film, and having it accurately portray the effect it had on the families.  It may just be that this film came out so damned well because of her passionate devotion and attachment to the story that this movie tells, as she worked very closely with the families of those involved with the actual events.

Final analysis:  Something in my bones feels Debra Hill's positive influences on World Trade Center, and the typically controversial Oliver Stone comes through with a powerful but respectful film that does not rely on atrocities to sell tickets.  Its about the horror of losing someone you love - of good families being broken apart by devastation and blind, mass murder.  One moment its a crystal blue Tuesday morning in September - the next its raining blood, and the tormented screams of 2,500 people are suddenly silenced to dust.  This film will bring you back to the day, and if you have any empathy in your soul that can reach into a film - you'll be relating to a lot of pain in World Trade Center from start to finish.  Controversy and reasons aside, I highly recommend this drama to horror fans looking to momentarily venture outside the genre.

- Official Site

World Trade Center
- True story of Will Jimeno and John McLoughlin, two Port Authority police officers who rushed into the burning World Trade Center on 9/11 to help rescue people, but became trapped themselves when the tower collapsed. A race against time ensued to free them before their air ran out. - Yahoo Movies

DVD Features Include:  Subtitles: English, Spanish
Available Audio Tracks: English (Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround), English (Dolby Digital 5.1), French (Dolby Digital 5.1)
Commentary by: Oliver Stone, 911 survivor Will Jimeno, and actual on-scene rescue workers
Extensive Interviews
Deleted Scenes

Starring: Nicolas Cage, Michael Pena, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Maria Bello, Stephen Dorff 
Directed by: Oliver Stone 

Several CLIPS are available to watch over at Yahoo Movies

Click HERE to purchase the 2-disc Special Edition DVD from Amazon.com