World Trade Center

Only 20 people were pulled alive from the rubble of the World Trade Center. The new film World Trade Center tells an intimate story of the 18th and 19th men rescued, New York Port Authority Police Sgt. John McLoughlin (Nicholas Cage) and Officer William Jimenez (Michael Peña).

The much-anticipated second Hollywood Sept. 11 film in some ways is like United 93, which this spring retold the story of the passengers aboard the plane that crashed into Pennsylvania farmland after a struggle with the hijackers. World Trade Center returns the viewer to the immediate emotional feelings of the day – the shock and chaos, confusion and disbelief. Like United 93, World Trade Center is almost apolitical – a marvel for some who anticipate a conspiracy from each film directed by Oliver Stone (JFK, Born on the Fourth of July). Still, the 2-hour and 6-minute film returns viewers in 2006 to another political reality – one in which the world wept along with us and Americans were united, if only for a brief time.

The trailer promoting the film features a satellite image of lower Manhattan on Sept. 11. Yet while the PG-13 film is set in the context of the earth-shattering event, it focuses on the intimate and personal relationships of these two men.

Responding to a crisis for which there is no crisis plan, a small team of officers volunteer to follow Sgt. McLoughlin into the towers on a rescue operation. After assembling their gear, they are just beginning to make their way through a concourse between the towers when the first tower collapses. World Trade Center vividly depicts the sense of being inside the hell of a collapsing building.

“What good did we do?� asks Jimenez, who is well-portrayed by Peña (who starred as the locksmith in Crash, the Oscar-winning best picture of 2005). Yet Jimenez, one of only a few of the Port Authority officers to volunteer to go into the tower, realizes that heroism and courage begin with being willing to act. Later, he reassures McLoughlin, who is feeling guilt-ridden for having led his men into the tower, “They couldn’t live with themselves if they hadn’t gone in.�

Much of the film’s center alternates between the claustrophobic space inhabited by McLoughlin and Jimenez, their families’ anxious vigils and the memories of life’s shared interactions.

Indeed the strongest message of the film is that humans are intrinsically connected – through memories the men share with their loved ones, through their pained conversation as they try to motivate each other to fight for life and through the selfless responses of others involved in their rescue.

The most vivid of those human responses is a true story that involved retired Marine Dave Karnes (Michael Shannon). Karnes describes feeling a call from God to put on his uniform and go to the tragedy’s epicenter to try to rescue people from the rubble. Dissuaded by his pastor and averting the restricted access, Karnes turned out to be one of the men who found the place where the two officers were trapped.

The script by newcomer Andrea Berloff focuses on the tiniest details about choices and actions, which make the difference between regret and happiness, between death and life. McLoughlin left for work that morning without kissing goodbye his wife, Donna (Maria Bello). Jimenez and his pregnant wife, Allison (Maggie Gyllenhaal), each regret their failure to compromise on a name for their unborn daughter. In another instance, Jimenez recalls that an officer’s offer to switch places with him spared his life but cost the other man his. Donna McLoughlin, wondering whether she’ll ever get a chance to see her own husband, comforts a woman who is stricken by angry words last spoken to her missing loved one.

As the officers struggle to survive, they alternate between waking consciousness, memories and hallucinations. While pinned and choking on dust and rocks, Jimenez has a vision of the Sacred Heart of Jesus offering him a liter bottle of cool water. That iconic Catholic devotional image, often depicted in sacred art, merges into the response of the rescuers, offering the men cool water and risking their own lives in service to them.

While World Trade Center movingly depicts the personal stakes and heroism of Sept. 11, this film and director Paul Greengrass’s United 93 have played it safe as the first major 9/11 films. Few would criticize stories of American heroism: passengers fighting back against the terrorists or two policemen struggling to survive. Yet one wonders when will we see cinematic portrayals of families whose lives were utterly destroyed by the events, a depiction of what motivated the attacks or an illustration of how 9/11 has changed our society?

Although highly moving, World Trade Center at some points comes close to feeling like one of those child-trapped-in-a-well films. Its proximity and faithfulness to the actual events makes it powerful. Time will tell which is its true legacy.

Scoop

What makes a good story? And how much can you believe about what anyone tells you?

American journalism student Sondra Pransky (Scarlett Johansson) is just beginning to get an idea. That is, when she’s not trying to interview a famous director, sleeping with him and forgetting to actually get the story. Sondra also has problems understanding what makes a story credible. And a lack of a credible and compelling story is the same weakness of Scoop, the newest film from writer/director Woody Allen.

That’s where British journalist Joe Strombel (Ian McShane) comes in. Joe will do anything to get a good story – even try to cheat death. So while traversing the river Styx at the hands of the Grim Reaper and accompanied by a group of stiffs, he meets a woman who says she was the last victim of the fabled Tarot Card killer. And that the killer, Peter Lyman (Hugh Jackman), is the son of a British lord.

In pursuit of his last scoop, Joe manages to contact Sondra as she is placed into a disappearing booth – a dematerializer -- by Sid Waterman (Allen), a Vaudeville-type magician who goes by “the Great Splendini.� Telling her she’s being handed “the biggest story since Jack the Ripper,� Joe becomes an unimpeachable source – if he were alive, that is.

After several tips from Joe, Sondra decides to prove she has what it takes to become a journalist and to break free from her familial destiny as a dental hygienist. But she creates a false persona for herself, introducing Waterman as her father to Lyman and his lordly crowd. The details she uncovers are merely circumstantial. And to make matters worse, she begins to fall in love with Lyman, the subject of her investigation.

Allen’s second consecutive film in London (following Match Point), Scoop provides some entertaining slapstick and barbs, particularly from Allen’s character. “I was brought up in the Hebrew persuasion, but when I got older I converted to narcissism,� he explains to the aristocrats. While the film is entertaining, it lacks the weight of Match Point and of Allen’s best morality plays, such as Crimes and Misdemeanors.

But it does give us the familiar neurotic characters Allen plays best. “I never gain an ounce,� Waterman tells Sondra. “My anxiety attacks work like aerobics.�

The 96-minute film illustrates the level of deception needed to maintain a good story – or a bad lie. In the end, the film turns on the characters’ ability to tell the difference between truth and fiction. But, as the jokes suggest, their collective discernment is somewhat lacking.

As Waterman and Sondra follow Lyman, Allen’s character speculates that perhaps the mysterious British lord is driven by some secret and shameful passion short of murder.

“Maybe he belongs to one of those clubs where they are cross-dressers?� he says. “Or maybe he does folk dancing.� Scoop is full of such fun. But this story has a shorter life than newsprint.