How do you review a movie that you ethically believe shouldn't have been made?
Well... firstly, you don't admit to actually putting in the effort to see it at the cinema nor spending money to see it in such a venue. Nor do you even admit to spending money at a rental shop. Instead, you surreptitiously slide in an anecdote about how your local grocery has a DVD vending machine and how you can hire DVD's for £1 per six hours (seriously... it's actually quite cool).
So anyway, in the absence of any other release, I hired this last night. In short, it's massively overcooked. It takes an emotive subject and tries to create a fitting tribute to those who were professionally obliged to grasp the shitty end of the stick. I think it possibly succeeds in demonstrating the hyperbole that came out of that day: heroism, sacrifice, terror... but in the process, it perhaps loses some credibility by buying into the razzmatazz and certainly loses impact by some frankly terrible scriptwriting.
There's far too many lingering slow-mo's (a pet peeve of mine), and waaaay too many reaction shots. In this way, Stone took the easy way out - he chose to tell what is essentially a narrative story that attempts to reflect the 'initial reaction' of shock and confusion of that day... but with very little else to support it. There was no real attempt to tell the stories of the buried men's characters. They're just random people who get trapped under the rubble. I feel it would have worked much, much better had we been introduced comprehensively to the lives of the men, with the terrorist act being nothing more than a random event that intruded in their lives. That would have at least made me care.
But Stone chose not to. Instead, the characterisation took place over the 100-or-so minutes of them being trapped through some god-awful flashback scenes which, I presume, were supposed to evoke some empathy to both their and the wives' predicament - the over-exposed light, the intentionally warm and clean colours in contrast to the men's environment. It didn't particularly work. Especially considering that the flashbacks basically laboured the same points over and over and over again throughout that 100 minutes. Although it perhaps reflects the seemingly never-ending anguish that those hours must have been for all concerned, it unfortunately comes across as overcooked and even slightly patronising when in celluloid form. They deserved to be part of a CSI Miami episode.
I also thought the dialogue between the trapped men was a little hokey and the occasional use of humour was entirely misplaced. Again, I return to that thought about the film reflecting the 'initial reaction' of the day. Perhaps when faced with disaster, New York's finest
actually revert to speaking in clichés? Maybe that's what people
really do when faced with tragedy? Or perhaps the true reality of the day is too unbearable to witness, so we choose to use hindsight with an element of rose-tinted spectacles?
There were other aspects of the film that just didn't 'fit'. Suicide? Gun going off randomly?
And what the hell was wrong with that marine?
L2R said:
Few things put me off more than a serious drama passing characters with overly heroic and patriotic rubbish. The marine in this can be seen that way, but to me, his over the top patriotism and religiousness showed an obsessive disorder more than any heroic factor, but i'm afraid the general audience won't see that deeply into him.
Hmmmm... maybe. I suppose in some ways, the marine could also symbolise the element of American society that pulled together in the crisis, but whose thoughts turned inevitably to vengeance - an embodiment of that inimitably American authoritarianism?
The only problem with any of those explanations is that the film was so achingly two-dimensional, that reading either of those two qualities into the character seems somewhat... hopeful? As much as I wanted there to be some 'meaningful' reason for his bizarre character, I couldn't escape the feeling that searching for a reason was actually an apologistic act to mitigate what is simply a case of dire, dire, cliché-ridden scriptwriting.
"We're the marines... YOU ARE our mission... hut, hut..."
"They're gonna need some good men out there to avenge this..."
Give me strength. 8)
Oh, oh... wait... my absolute favourite bizarro moment was:
"It's as though God put up a screen of smoke to prevent us from seeing something we are not yet ready to see."
Uh... OK, if you say so Mr "Staff Sergeant". I'm just going to continue unravelling my firehose while you pull back God's curtain. Oh, and Staff Sergeant, don't forget to explain examples of symbolism at every opportunity, will you now? Perhaps when you find the buried John McLoughlin, you could point at him and say in your monotonous voice something profound like:
"you being buried under this rubble is like America's innocence being brought to an end". Or not.
Fucking weird.
If it wasn't Stone directing, I'd have been tempted to suggest that the marine character was a "focus-group inclusion" - a device that had been included at the producer's/studio's request to satisfy the moron demographic.
Despite all that, the film is punctuated with some absolutely beautiful cinematography and shots. The shots of the aftermath and clear-up are quite striking. There's also a few of Stone's trademark spiritual/druggie aspects (the shot of "Jesus" is very weird and actually tripped me out despite being entirely sober); and a couple of conspiracy angles that are sprinkled very conservatively throughout the film ("missile" hitting the pentagon, "implosion" of buildings) - all of which could be reasonably defended as further demonstrations of the film attempting to reflect the 'initial reaction' and confusion of the day.
In short, don't bother... unless you find one of these super-cool DVD vending machines!
![:\](https://bluelight.org/xf/BL_Images/Orig_Emoji/wrygrin.gif "wry grin :\")
