“Now listen, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business, and make money.’ Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.”*

If there’s one thing I took away from Oliver Stone’s World Trade Center, it was to make every day count. I know that sounds cliché, but if there’s ever been a day to prove how valuable every day is, and how uncertain every tomorrow is, it was September 11, 2001.

World Trade Center starts off so normal and so ordinary that the first several minutes might even be described as ordinary. People get up, go through their morning routine, get into cars and subways and ferries to go to work, and get their assignments and go about their day just as they have every other day. This very routine, however, builds in the audience a sense of dread because we know how that day turned out.

When I think about the start of my day on September 11, 2001, it was ordinary as well. How could any of us have known it would turn into unimaginable horror? We couldn’t, hence the reason to make every day count. We can never take for granted that this day will be like every other day, a point driven home every time terrorists plot another attack. Make every day count. Make sure that if this day were your last, that you’d have no regrets. Make sure you know where you will spend eternity.

Oliver Stone treats the subject matter in World Trade Center with kid gloves, and I’m thankful he did. Most of it happens off screen. We never see the planes hit, we only hear about the Pentagon and United flight 93 through news reports. We see the collapse of the first tower from the inside, and hear the collapse of the other while buried beneath the rubble with the two Port Authority Officers portrayed by Nic Cage and Michael Pena. We catch glimpses of the building crumbling again through news casts, but none of it is recreated with modern special effects, and why would it need to be? We have all had those images burned into our collective consciousness. Few of us have forgotten what it looked like, so we certainly don’t need every detail recreated and portrayed on screen. However, thirty to fifty years from now, we probably will. Just as Saving Private Ryan had to recreate D-Day and the beaches of Normandy in extreme and bloody detail in order to help a new generation understand exactly what it was like, someday we will need all the details of 9/11 recreated in order for us to truly remember. But not now; it’s still too fresh, and fortunately Oliver Stone understands that.

Still, this is a dramatization, and unfortunately that fact is often more apparent than in United 93, especially during the domestic scenes. Many of the scenes with the wives and family waiting to hear about their husbands come off flat, and feel like filler material to round out the two hours. The movie really shines when it’s about the two officers trapped in the rubble. Stone captures the claustrophobic and helpless feeling of being buried alive, and Cage and Pena give moving performances, especially considering they were covered in grime and had limited movement.

The one thing that confused was seeing Jesus wearing a cross, when he brought them water in a vision. I find it hard to believe that Jesus would wear a representation of the device that killed him, so I’m assuming it was there so the audience understood who this was. In a later scene, though, one of the characters says who it is, so I found that confusing.

World Trade Center is a moving reminder of the heroism and unity we all felt on September 11th. It’s also a stark reminder of why we should never take our loved ones, friends, or even each day we have for granted. At the end of the film, subways, ferries, and streets are empty. An ordinary day was shattered by evil, and yet in the midst of darkness we found humanity capable of self-sacrifice and unconditional love. This isn’t a great film, but I think the nearness of the event makes it so much more moving than it might otherwise have been. Those memories and emotions are still so fresh, Oliver Stone didn’t have to work too hard to make a moving reminder of how September 11, 2001 was an ordinary day that no one will ever forget.

*James 4:13-14 (NIV)