Word: mcloughlin
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...film concentrates on two of the men - Sergeant John McLoughlin (Nicolas Cage) and Officer Will Jimeno (Michael Pe?a) - who were pinned down in the metal carnage on the buildings' Concourse level, and on the attempt of a few men above to rescue them. It intercuts the action in Lower Manhattan with the hopes and forebodings of McLoughlin's and Jimeno's wives as they anxiously await news of their husbands' fate...
...terms, most of this works. Cage is especially fine. He tamps down his familiar eccentricities, and lends McLoughlin a laser stare of dread as he lies in his metal cage he thinks has become his coffin. After he's rescued and brought out on a stretcher, McLoughlin's gesture of touching the hand of each helper and saying "Thank you" has a heart-touching simplicity and nobility...
...this war. Before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Americans did support the President's decision, but that majority has evaporated. There's nothing like the audience's rooting interest that '40s war movies could take for granted. Americans today support the troops, but not the war that, like McLoughlin and Jimeno, they are trapped...
...Even given its narrow frame of interest, World Trade Center skews the story for easy uplift. For example, there was another Port Authority officer, Dominick Pezzulo (played by Jay Hernandez), who was trapped with McLoughlin and Jimeno. He managed to free himself from the rubble, working heroically to pry Jimeno loose before he was crushed and killed. Did Pezzulo have a photogenic wife and kids? Might the detailing of their immediate anxiety and lasting grief not have been as illuminating as showing the ultimate triumph of John and Will's families? Why must this movie about 9/11 be only about...
...actors themselves emit plenty of these screams throughout the film. Port Authority Police officers John McLoughlin (Nicolas Cage) and Will Jimeno (Michael Peña) are trapped in the mezzanine level when the towers collapse, buried underneath 20 feet of concrete for nearly a day with only their pain to keep them awake and alive...