Last night I bought a DVD of Oliver Stone’s new film 9/11
The Thai seller promised the bootleg was 95% perfect.
Most pirate copies aren’t 100% until someone gets their hands on the master. A month usually. Being a New Yorker I took a chance and wasn’t disappointed by the quality of the DVD.
I could hear someone laughing throughout the film and the focus kept fading like my TV was suffering from a brain seizure.
Still it was watchable, although only just.
The movie initially captures the normalcy of a day gone wrong.
Especially the shock on the faces of the cops and the sound of people hitting the building.
Amazing anyone survives the collapse. Over 20 did. I don’t know if they had flashbacks. Near-death scraps are good stimuli for seeing the past flash before your eyes. And the other cop sees Jesus. Too bad it wasn’t on a piece of toast or the condensation on a church window.
Two years after 9/11 I was sitting in an East Village restaurant with two cops. Both narcotic detectives. A group of firemen were gathered at the bar toasting their fallen comrades. The rivalry between the two departments is well-known. Not the depth of the rivalry. One of the cops mumbled, “Look at them heroes.”
My friend, a highly decorated drug squad officer, answered a little louder than he should have, “If someone had posted a sing, nothing worth anything in the World Trade towers not one fireman would have died.”
The conversation at the bar stopped and the biggest fireman approached our table. “What did you say?”
“I said that you guys died unnecessary.”
“You said we went in there to steal.”
“I saw trucks loaded with jeans. I’m just saying what I saw.”
An expletive followed but no fight. I told my friend he had balls to say that. He shrugged and replied, “I saw what I saw. They were heroes, but everyone has a price for heroism.”
That’s how some saw that day, but not in the movies.
Everyone is a hero and gets to live and even Nicholas Cage wasn’t too annoying in this movie. Still I FFWD through the film in 45 minutes.
Sort of like the Cliff Note version.
Nothing can capture the awful majesty of that day greater than the real footage.
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