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The 9-11 terrorist attacks on New York City would seem to offer Oliver Stone all the elements for the kind of epic, ideologically charged filmmaking that marked his Born on the Fourth of July, Salvador and JFK. Yet World Trade Center takes a decidedly different path. It looks at the tragedy on intimate, personal terms, with a sensitivity and restraint the macho provocateur has rarely revealed before.

Nicolas Cage and Michael Pena (Crash) offer powerful performances as Sgt. John McLoughlin and Officer Will Jimeno, real-life New York Port Authority cops whose usual duties involve keeping the derelicts from hassling passengers at the city's main bus station. They rush to the financial district to assist with rescue operations, doing their best to cope with a catastrophe for which, McLoughlin says, "there is no plan."

They are scarcely through the doors when the first tower begins to collapse, killing the other members of their team and pinning the two seriously injured survivors in a nightmare maze of jagged concrete, sizzling electrical cables and flaming debris. With no chance of freeing themselves, they can only bolster each other's spirits and hope they somehow will be found in time.

Stone paints the day's horrific events with a kind of tragic minimalism. We don't see hundreds inside the towers perish, merely one agonizing shot of a far-off figure plunging from the upper stories. That is enough. For some it will be too much.

Keeping the focus on the central characters personal and domestic, Stone cuts between the immobilized, weakening policemen and their wives anxiously waiting for news. Allison Jimeno (Maggie Gyllenhaal), pregnant with the couple's second child, comforts their four-year-old in New Jersey, as their extended family prays. Fifty miles away in southern New York, Donna McLoughlin (Maria Bello) and their four older children nervously follow the grim news reports while well-wishers offer hollow-sounding encouragement. There are no scenes of deliberating politicians or generals with map pins explaining the larger picture. Almost everything we see is what the policemen and their families observed that day.

The decision to distill the story to an account of several characters on a single day imparts a strong sense of unity, but eliminates the political context of the attacks. World Trade Center could almost be about first responders trapped at any crisis scene. The first tower's implosion is a sequence of furious intensity, but it has no deeper emotional impact than the standard summer disaster movie.

Stone connects us to the trapped men and their loved ones through flashbacks and dreams that emphasize the small details of everyday life. Jimeno and McLoughlin think continually about their wives, their pointless squabbles, the home improvement projects they may not live to complete.

Stone acknowledges the religious and political background of the conflict through the story of another real-life figure, Dave Karnes (Michael Shannon), a former Marine from Connecticut who quickly grasped the nature of the attacks. Karnes left his accountancy office, prayed in his church, put on his old uniform and drove to Ground Zero, where he bluffed his way past the barricades and began searching through the rubble for survivors. While the trapped Jimeno saw visions of a radiant Jesus offering him hope, Karnes probed for signs of life with tireless determination.

The film ends with an uplifting catharsis that celebrates human bravery in the face of adversity but avoids flag-waving. In the coda, Karnes decides to remain in uniform because America will "need some good men to avenge this." An epilogue notes that he served in Iraq, a decision World Trade Center neither endorses nor criticizes. That's another movie.[[In-content Ad]]

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