World Trade Center – Mark Burns

Oliver Stone divines a glint of the positive among the wreckage of September 11 in this poignant true tale.

On September 11, a small group of first responders from the Port Authority Police Department, led by Sgt. John McLoughlin (Nicholas Cage), are gathering supplies for a rescue effort when the first Trade Center tower collapses on top of them. Miraculously, McLoughlin and rookie officer Will Jimeno (Michael Pena) survive, trapped in the rubble of an elevator shaft in an underground concourse. In the film, Oliver Stone explores their stories from just before the attack through their rescue, showing the disaster from the point of view of the men, their families and, to a lesser extent, their rescuers.

Every facet of the film’s story is relating direct accounts of the people involved. It’s an intimate portrait of a boggling disaster, and its firsthand perspective is a jolting reminder of the human toll. While intense, director Oliver Stone is measured with his representation. His film picks at a partially formed emotional scab until the wound stings, then blows on it a little with its positive themes of heroism, survival and hope.

To this end, Stone avoids overwhelming with a direct-from-CNN replay of the calamity. The silhouette of an incoming plane sweeps over the cityscape and a scarred tower is shown looming over the streets, but moments of impact and distant views of collapse are never shown. Most footage of the smoking towers is seen indirectly through glimpses of recycled news footage. Stone instead sticks to the officers’ perspective as they are rattled by the shockwave of first impact and jolted by the collapse of the towers.

Traces of Stone’s stylistic touch can be seen early on, but once disaster strikes it evaporates in his effort to be sensitive to the story. His provocative nature is absent, instead offering an apolitical view via straight storytelling. It’s such a straight recitation that some film buffs may fault it as uncreative.

In a sense the film is an oddity, a Stone picture that plays like a Hallmark feature: a tale of heavily emotional sentimentalism sound-tracked with the sad tinkling of a solitary piano chord. Still, it’s a mighty punch in the gut. Stone and his actors capture the pain and confusion of the moment to wrenching effect and easily absorb viewers into the swell of emotion. In particular, the ordeal of the two officers at the movie’s backbone is stirring and relatable as the men struggle to survive through shock, pain, flashbacks and visions. But the film is challenged in its attempts at weaving in the tales of other rescuers, namely former marine Dave Karnes and the Wisconsin officers who came to assist recovery. Their contributions are of note but nearly get lost in the prevailing story.

As for the controversy over whether it’s too soon for World Trade Center (or spring’s United 93, for that matter), that’s a personal call. But consider the oft-compared tragedy of Pearl Harbor. Just one day after the sneak attack, 20th Century Fox started production on the slapdash melodrama Secret Agent of Japan in a stated effort to be the first studio to use the attack in a film. The ensuing Hollywood scramble pumped out a total of five Pearl Harbor-themed dramas within a year’s time. Against such precedent, the timing and tone of this year’s September 11 dramas shows restraint.

This is no cinematic masterpiece, but its insights make for a poignant and gripping film. Not to mention exhausting. It’s one worth watching, at some point.

Good Drama • PG-13 • 125 min.

When a Stranger Calls – Mark Burns

Despite the ingredients for a taut psychological thriller, this call goes slack

Stalker torments babysitter in this tepid remake of a 1979 cult horror.

Jill Johnson (Camilla Belle) has gone over her cell phone minutes. And oh, the consequences. As punishment, she’s drafted into a babysitting gig and dropped off at a remote lakefront home in the mountains of Colorado. She’s left to skulk through the shadows alone as the baby sleeps and a live-in maid tinkers out of view. But her dull evening takes a turn for the sinister as a psychotic stalker torments her with increasingly menacing phone calls.

This horror is at the opposite end of the spectrum from such graphic gore flicks as Hostel. Stranger aims for psychological chills, preying on themes of isolation, entrapment and the unknown. Jill’s only link to the outside world is the telephone line, and it’s been corrupted. She is stranded in the midst of a looming wilderness, itself violently alive in alpine tempest. She sits in a glass house, unable to see into the night yet fully revealed to he who might invade. All fine ingredients for a taut psychological thriller.

Yet it goes slack. Director Simon West (The General’s Daughter) seems preoccupied with supplying explanations and justifications for Jill’s predicament, sealing up the holes so common in horror plots. That’s good and fine, even lending the film some intelligence. It’s certainly brilliant compared to mental duds like Wolf Creek. But West’s compulsion with framing the fright makes for a slow, laborious build. Much of his setup is carried over ubiquitous phone traffic, filled with dry detail as the sitter chats up friends and calls around for help. Smart character, but boring to watch.

From the beginning, Stranger doesn’t live up to its promise of thrills. It starts weak, as West tries to establish the psycho threat by juxtaposing crime and carnival. But the savagery of the crime is only hinted at, so the effect is negligible. From there on, a terse soundtrack of piano and violin pervades every moment in a cheap play to ramp up tension; instead it just gets annoying to hear doom in adagio as Jill walks the high school corridors, ties her shoe, picks her nose.

As the real chance for thrills rolls around, West under uses his opportunities of fright. For instance, children can serve horror well; here the kids wake to nightmarish horror and a sitter they’ve never met. Their peril does not compel as they are reduced to squealing tots scrambling unhunted along the periphery. Telephone conversation is constant, yet those insidious calls from the stalker are barely sinister enough to raise a goosebump. Predictability saps most moments of their crucial surprise. Confrontation is uncreative, repetitive and all too brief on the heels of such a slow buildup. West may be trying to horrify by courting realism, but it doesn’t work.

To the movie’s benefit, West pulls together sharp cinematography and paints a shadowy, ominous setting for the stalk. He also garners unusually good performances for the genre. He just doesn’t manage to excite.

Viewers easily scared and looking for a moderate chill might twitch at a lonely screening. Colorado babysitters may cringe. But most thrill seekers will find this one a snoozer.

Poor horror • PG-13 • 83 min.