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COPYRIGHT 2006 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.
Movie Listings
The Film File
The Port Authority cops in Oliver Stone's "World Trade Center" emerge at first light from their houses in Clifton, New Jersey, and Goshen, New York, and head for the city. As other officers make their way into town from Staten Island and Brooklyn, Stone gives us lovely shots of empty Manhattan streets at dawn--the episode is like the quiet orchestral prelude to an epic opera. We get the point of the anticipatory opening: the incomparable urban island couldn't flourish as it does without the talent and the labor of the communities pouring into it. Then comes a surprise: the men in "World Trade Center" leave their families behind, but the movie does not. As the catastrophe of September 11, 2001, unfolds, and the police encounter serious trouble downtown, their wives, children, parents, and friends, stranded at home without news, turn out to be just as tough as the men are. "World Trade Center" is about courage and endurance as a function of family strength; it's about suburban and small-town America trying to save the big city. Those are conservative themes, much praised for their appearance in this movie by the kind of right-wingers who have long hated Oliver Stone. Some of the euphoria--Cal Thomas, a columnist and a commentator at Fox News, calls the movie "one of the greatest pro-American, pro-family, pro-faith, pro-male, flag-waving God Bless America films you will ever see"--is not only inane,...
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