A Scatterbrained Review: Thys Movie Was NOT Pimp, I Definitely Shouldnta Gone to See It

I've walked out of two... no, make it three movies ever. Two of them were last night. One was because I was angry and immensely irritated at a wasted opportunity, and another was, well, the combination of carryover ill will from the first movie and the utter lack of humor of the second.

World Trade Center and Talladega Nights: the Ballad of Ricky Bobby.

I honestly can't speak on Talladega Nights-- I saw, perhaps, fifteen minutes of it, but I saw long enough to know that this wasn't going to be the flawed absurdist epic that was Anchorman, or have the sort of charm and humor of Elf, or capture the.... well, eh, it was probably better than Kicking and Screaming. Anyway, I think Will Ferrell is one of the funniest people on the planet, this listing (via the relaunched Cracked Magazine) of his best SNL sketches bears that out. I'm just not up for the same pablum he's been going for since he got into movies... the so-called Wack Pack crap does nothing for me. It just wasn't funny, and that makes me sad.

But I don't want to talk about Will Ferrell.

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World Trade Center is a pedantic, boring piece of crap. It tells us the story-- in great detail-- of not just what it was like to be buried beneath the rubble of the WTC, it tells us what it was like that day. Guess what, it was five fuckin' years ago, everyone remembers that day. Here's a line from the movie, as a group of people in an office are huddled around a tv, one guy speaks up:

"I hope all of you realize... this nation's at war."

No duh, dipshit. We all said that, we all said "bastards" when we first figured out someone did this to us, we all panicked about the people whose fates we didn't know, and we all know how it fucking turned out.

And, thus, it's boring. The only parts that really grabbed me was watching the details of how they organized themselves once the towers were hit and how they planned their evacuation. That was maybe ten minutes of the movie. The rest, up until I left, is the two guys in the hole. That's my other thing-- the so-called intent of this movie is silly. The film, according to many reviewers, is supposed to be about "hope." You know what I say it's about? LUCK. Those two Port Authority officers, Jimeno and McLoughlin were the lucky ones out of hundreds and hundreds of their coworkers to make it out while still retaining most of their body parts. It was a terribly shitty day and a couple of good guys survived an uncomfortable situation-- what does that tell us about our soul? How does this change our outlook and perspective on the most transforming day of our lives? Yes, the wives were freaked out and angsty and that's understandable and true, but there's nothing new to be said. It's been covered.

Oliver Stone, typically, does controversial takes on bold subjects (JFK, Nixon, Platoon), some working better than others. This movie is just dull, a slow dirge with little perspective, recounting events we all know by heart and that matter to every person in different ways. A World Trade Center disaster movie was bound to happen, I had just hoped that there would be something meaningful, some sort of meta-contextual significance behind it... and it was just a subpar disaster drama. A Crying Firefighter movie. Oliver Stone can do better than that.

I bailed on this movie a little more than halfway through; I couldn't stand it. Perhaps it has a rousing ending that speaks to the triumphant character and indefatigable soul of America... or perhaps it's just, supposedly, an outlet for our tears, supposing that they weren't shed enough or as long... that we need to remember something that's a touchstone for every day of our lives. Why did they make that movie? Make a documentary about those men, let me hear their stories... but from them. Show me how hellish it was in that pit and how large a task it was to free them... but don't talk down to me, don't simplify it to a 2 hour and 8 minute moneymaker. Paramount says it will give ten percent of the opening weekend box office take to various WTC charities... a pittance, if you ask me, probably amounting to 2 or 3 million dollars at best. Nick Cage doesn't take a shit for that amount of money.

If you want to see a 9/11 movie, check out United 93 when it hits DVD. That film is far less based on fact and more on speculation and downright guessing... but we know what those passengers did, less the extent of their actions. That film is unnerving and, while you know the ending, it fills you with a "What If?" brand of dirty nausea that carries forth through the picture.

It begins, like this one, with a brief examination of the mundane dullness of urban life... travel, newspapers, coffee... and it ends with a metaphor, a screen full of arms and hands, white and brown, grasping, fighting, grappling desperately for the controls of a doomed ship.

I didn't wait to find any answer from World Trade Center. There's nothing it could tell me about myself and my country that I haven't learned in five years.

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1. The third, but chronologically first movie I've ever walked out of was Cameron Crowe's Elizabethtown. Jessica and I gave it a chance, but that movie was a piece of horseshit.