World Trade Center 2006

Carrie Rickey, Philadelphia Inquirer: [A] humanist movie of enormous empathy. Read more

Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune: World Trade Center is the second major studio picture to weigh in on the events of Sept. 11, 2001. It is a more limited achievement: a comfortably unsettling drama. Read more

Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal: The filmmaker and his colleagues have brought the sensibility of an old-fashioned Hollywood disaster movie, and a mediocre one at that. Read more

Mark Rahner, Seattle Times: Noble intent and adherence to real events don't necessarily add up to success onscreen; it's also often tedious and schmaltzy. Read more

Eleanor Ringel Gillespie, Atlanta Journal-Constitution: World Trade Center is selfless filmmaking at its best. Here, without frills or bombast or politics, is the day the world turned upside down. Our faith in each other, Stone's movie tells us, is what helped right it again. Read more

Keith Phipps, AV Club: Even working within the restrictions of a PG-13 rating, Stone brings fresh immediacy to the horrors of Ground Zero, and Cage and Peda use small, telling strokes to make their characters come alive. Read more

Bill Muller, Arizona Republic: With this unflinching account of that day, Stone has made the most important film of his long career. Read more

Ty Burr, Boston Globe: Oliver Stone has made an honorable film, in other words, and almost the best thing I can say about it is that it doesn't feel like an Oliver Stone movie. Read more

Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times: The old Stone was not exactly a bargain, but he was never this pious or this conventional. Read more

Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader: The story of what they experienced is gripping and inspiring, but however true it is to their lives... the way it's told restricts what the movie can say about the larger tragedy. Read more

Amy Biancolli, Houston Chronicle: It displays optimism, patriotism, emotional frankness and faith. Detractors might call it sentimental. Most of all, it exhibits no political slant whatsoever, injecting only heartfelt empathy for the day's many victims and heroes. Read more

Peter Rainer, Christian Science Monitor: Despite my strong reservations, World Trade Center is strongly acted and has sequences of undeniable power. At its best it shares with Stone's finest work a feeling for the imminence of death and salvation. Read more

Lisa Kennedy, Denver Post: World Trade Center approaches drama's potent promise, finding in the story of two individuals and their families uncommon valor and common ground at ground zero. Read more

Tom Long, Detroit News: World Trade Center hits us where we live. And it reminds us how lucky we are to live, and love, and even struggle. Read more

Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly: As a tribute to those who died, and survived, on Sept. 11, World Trade Center is a scrupulous and honorable film. Read more

Terry Lawson, Detroit Free Press: World Trade Center is beautifully acted down to the smallest role and exquisitely crafted -- it is all but impossible to tell the difference between the computer-generated imagery and live-action sequences shot in Manhattan. Read more

Philip Wuntch, Dallas Morning News: Some comedies appeal to our inner child, while some horror movies appeal to our inner masochist. Oliver Stone's World Trade Center poignantly appeals to our inner patriot. Read more

Ella Taylor, L.A. Weekly: Stone may be the bluntest instrument in Hollywood's arsenal, but watching his new film about the collapse of the Twin Towers, I found myself nostalgic for his chutzpah. Read more

Rene Rodriguez, Miami Herald: World Trade Center feels like the respectful and tender beginning of a dialogue between filmmakers and audiences about a subject most would rather not revisit via their entertainment. Read more

Gene Seymour, Newsday: The movie's gradual build-up from the mundane to the unimaginable contains some of Stone's most evocative and searing filmmaking. Read more

David Ansen, Newsweek: Piercingly moving and utterly unpolitical, World Trade Center holds us in a fierce grip. Read more

David Edelstein, New York Magazine/Vulture: Their film is gripping -- and should be: It has its tentacles around you from its stark title on. It's a title that means so many things to so many people. Read more

Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger: It's about Americans doing their jobs. It's about Americans seeing each other only as Americans. It's about the real promise of America, fulfilled. Read more

Jack Mathews, New York Daily News: This as uncomplicated a movie as Stone (Born on the 4th of July, JFK) has made, and one of his most powerful. Read more

Andrew Sarris, New York Observer: [World Trade Center] doesn't pretend to encompass the entire catastrophe of 9/11, and that is its great negative virtue. Read more

Roger Moore, Orlando Sentinel: It's easily the best movie of the summer. Read more

James Berardinelli, ReelViews: World Trade Center is Stone's most potent motion picture since Platoon, and may be the most accessible across-the-board since Wall Street. Read more

Stephanie Zacharek, Salon.com: Even when Stone is clumsy, he at least seems to recognize that he can't possibly re-create the experience of these policemen: The best he can do is put it onstage, reminding us that this happened to someone else and not to us. Read more

Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle: Stone does everything he can to do justice to the real-life people he's depicting, and yet nothing he does can cover up the film's single but overarching weakness: The personal story he uses to portray the larger event is limited in scope and impact. Read more

Dana Stevens, Slate: For all its crude effectiveness as a true-life melodrama of survival, World Trade Center doesn't do much with 9/11, except to sentimentalize it for popular consumption. Read more

Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune: It looks at the tragedy on intimate, personal terms, with a sensitivity and restraint the macho provocateur has rarely revealed before. Read more

St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Read more

Richard Roeper, Chicago Sun-Times: [T]here's much discussion about whether audiences are 'ready' to see a mainstream movie about the events of 9/11... That's your choice, but you'll be missing one of the best films of the year. Read more

Rick Groen, Globe and Mail: Obviously, living through 9/11 even at a televised remove, we felt overwhelmed. Now, sitting through the re-creation, we feel something altogether different and yet faintly familiar -- underwhelmed. Read more

Geoff Pevere, Toronto Star: If duty is the operative attitude here, inevitability is the inescapable result, and World Trade Center ultimately finds itself as pinned down as McLoughlin and Jimeno are. Read more

Richard Schickel, TIME Magazine: A powerful movie experience, a hymn in plainsong that glorifies that which is best in the American spirit. Read more

Dave Calhoun, Time Out: Destiny pervades the project, and anyone who expected Stone to toe anything other than the company line was gravely mistaken. Read more

Claudia Puig, USA Today: Stone takes one of the most tragic events of this century and focuses on the hope, humanity and determination that also held sway amid the darkness. Read more

Brian Lowry, Variety: ... World Trade Center yields lovely and touching moments but proves a slow-going, arduous movie experience ... Read more

J. Hoberman, Village Voice: The surprising thing about this commission job, directed from Andrea Berloff's script, is not its factuality but its restraint. Read more

Desson Thomson, Washington Post: It shortchanges audiences when it comes to dramatic revelations that could have resonated on a deeper level. It telegraphs its emotions loud and clear, but somehow they don't reach us. Read more