World Trade Center

• Directed by Oliver Stone
• Starring Nicholas Cage, Michael Pena, Maria Bello, Maggie Gyllenhaal
• In a surprising move for a movie about gigantic events like 9/11, Oliver Stone based this movie on a character study of the two protagonists and their families, rather than the actual event itself. This would have been fine if the drama was good, but here they are as boring and predictable as the soap operas you see on Thai TV, possibly even worse. At times, the movie looks like a Hallmark series rather than the grand epic it probably wants to be. The actings aren't bad. Cage did an admiring job, seeing that we only see his half-buried face (darkly lit too) for most of the movie, but the conflicts the characters find themselves in are so mundane and cliche that I want to scream "I don't care!!". As a result, the movie is neither successful as a movie about 9/11 nor about the human spirit. See United 93 for a much more intense example of a 9/11 movie, all done with no A-list stars around. On a side note, can anyone tell me why the heck is this movie called "World Trade Center"? -Comment written by Dear-