Depicts Cops' Ordeal: PA Police Leader: 'WTC' Gets It Right

Depicts Cops' Ordeal
PA Police Leader: 'WTC' Gets It Right

"World Trade Center," director Oliver Stone's movie of two Port Authority cops trapped in the wreckage of the Twin Towers who are ultimately rescued, captures with stunning accuracy the conditions and the emotions of the officers and their families, the head of their union said last week.

GUS DANESE: 'Better than I expected.' "At first I was reluctant to see it, but when I saw the movie it was better than my expectations," Port Authority Police Benevolent Association President Gus Danese said in an Aug. 17 phone interview.

'Shows It As It Was'

"Anyone who wants to know what happened that day, this is the movie they should see."

In telling the story from the perspective of two now-retired PA cops, the movie shines a spotlight on a police force that has long labored in the shadow of the NYPD, and hasn't emerged completely even though it lost 37 officers on Sept. 11 compared to 23 from the larger department.

"Unless you lived in New York City, most people have a tendency of forgetting" how prominent a role the PA cops played in the Trade Center response, Mr. Danese said. The movie gives a national audience a sense of the value of the work they did on that day and in their routine patrols, and he said the response had been noticeable, from both his own rank and file and among colleagues at a police convention in San Diego from which he had just returned.

RE-CREATING A DAY OF TRAUMA AND COURAGE: Nicolas Cage (foreground) as Port Authority Police Sgt. John McLoughlin and Michael P Peña (right) as PA Police Officer Will Jimeno offer gripping portrayals of two of the few first-responders who were trapped and then rescued from the World Trade Center rubble in the new movie of the same name. The film features a screenplay by Andrea Berloff and direction by Mr. Stone that has his characteristic knack for building tension while portraying people under stress, but with a welcome sense of understatement. As he did in "Platoon," the Vietnam War movie that established him as a star two decades ago, Mr. Stone uses a few characters to tell a much larger story about a traumatic, life-transforming experience.

Captures Confusion, Fear

He evokes the confusion and uncertainty that marked Sept. 11, 2001 from the time that the first plane crashed into one of the Twin Towers, the raw fear and tension that grips the Port Authority cops both before and after the south tower collapses, killing several of them, and the agony and elation the two cops' families endure waiting for news of them and finally, after some premature false hope that they had been brought to safety, when they are reunited at Bellevue Hospital.

"The scenery right down to the dust was accurate - he really got it right," Mr. Danese said of Mr. Stone. "This didn't have the 'Hollywood touch' - 98 percent of it is absolutely the way it was."

The movie begins by showing several of the cops making the commute into their base at the Port Authority, by commuter rail and - in the case of Sgt. John McLoughlin, as played by Nicolas Cage, and Police Officer Will Jimeno (Michael Peña), by car from upstate New York and New Jersey.

Shadow on the Wall

Sgt. McLoughlin turns out the morning shift of officers with the parting words, "Protect yourselves. Watch each other's backs." Officer Jimeno, doing routine patrol work in the Port Authority, suddenly has his attention diverted by the shadow of a plane on a brick wall.

When the cops are sent downtown in a city bus to respond to the first crash, one of them wonders, "What schmuck would fly a plane into the Trade Center?"

"Maybe they ran outta gas," a second one responds.

Amid their nervousness, they take comfort in knowing that Sergeant McLoughlin is in charge of the operation, with one remarking, "If anyone knows what to do, it's him." Moments earlier, the film had shown Mr. McLoughlin, riding downtown in a Port Authority van, telling a colleague that for this kind of catastrophe, "There's no plan."

Looks of Disbelief

When the cops exit the bus, they look upward and disbelief appears on their faces. There are screams from the crowd, but only once does the audience glimpse a body falling from the sky. Sergeant McLoughlin and his men enter the Trade Center complex through building No. 5, and move past civilians who are exiting looking numb, some bleeding, others covered in soot. There is anxiety in the cops' voices as they discuss whether a second plane had crashed, and a cop they meet inside the complex tells them that the Pentagon has been hit as well.

Mr. Cage as Sergeant McLoughlin suddenly hears an ominous rumbling and, desperation in his voice, shouts, "Run, the elevator shaft!" They all dive in that direction as the south tower collapses on them, and then the screen goes black.

Gradually we see them, trapped beneath the rubble, just three of the five officers still alive. When one asks where the others are, another responds, "They're in a better place."

Wife's Anxious Wait

The movie shifts to upstate Goshen, where Mr. McLoughlin's wife, Donna, played by Maria Bello, is at the home of a friend whose husband is also a first-responder who had gone to the Trade Center. A couple of official vans pull up to the house and the friend fears the worst, then exults when they tell her that her husband is alive. Ms. McLoughlin comforts her, and then a look of uncertainty appears on her face.

Mr. Stone keeps switching between the bowels of the Trade Center, where the men are trapped and seriously injured, and their homes, where family members and friends stay glued to the TV, looking for some word, some reason to believe they may emerge alive.

Down in the wreckage, periodic fires are sparked as the north tower collapses and another of their colleagues, Dominick Pezzulo, who had resisted the urge to climb to safety in order to try to extricate Officer Jimeno, is killed.

'Don't Go to Sleep'

Sergeant McLoughlin implores Officer Jimeno to fight the weariness that makes him want to sleep, telling him, "You're bleeding inside, Will. If you sleep, you don't know if you're coming back."

He then adds, "We'll make it, Will. Just don't go to sleep." Along with the fires around them comes a new terror: the dead officer's gun begins discharging, firing rounds near where Officer Jimeno is trapped. When Sergeant McLoughlin expresses regrets about having led the other officers to their deaths, Mr. Jimeno replies, "They couldn't have lived with themselves if they hadn't gone in. That's who they were."

Then a new explosion and ensuing cave-in leaves both of them praying loudly, trying to get past their fear. The movie cuts to Mr. Jimeno's daughter, Bianca, asking his pregnant wife, Allison, "Is Daddy coming home?"

"I don't know, honey," replies Maggie Gyllenhaal as Ms. Jimeno.

Finally Discovered

Rescuers keep coming, from cops and firefighters to a former Marine, Dave Karnes, who is working in Wilton, Connecticut when he sees the devastation on a TV screen. Mr. Karnes changes into his old uniform, comes to lower Manhattan, and walks into the wreckage alongside another Marine, Jason Thomas, in camouflage gear.

They locate the two trapped cops during their search, but getting them out is an arduous task that requires the help of NYPD Emergency Service Unit officers and firefighters and an unidentified Paramedic who is described as having battled substance abuse problems for years.

While they work to free the injured officers, Ms. McLoughlin is erroneously informed that her husband had walked out of the Trade Center wreckage and is safe on Liberty St. She drives to the Port Authority, where she learns that while he is definitely alive, he remains trapped.

'Where'd Buildings Go?'

Officer Jimeno tells an ESU cop trying to free him that he should cut his leg off if that makes it easier to get him out; the cop, Sgt. Scott Strauss, responds that they are going to get him out in one piece. When he is finally freed, and carried off on a makeshift stretcher, his euphoria turns to despair when he asks the men carrying him, "Hey, where'd the buildings go?"

"They're gone," is the response, and the magnitude of what occurred begins to register. This is one of the things the film does best: even while serving as what Mr. Danese called "a movie about courage and hope," it never allows the audience to forget the horrific death toll and the thousands of families, of civilians and rescue workers alike, for whom there was not a happy ending.

As Sergeant McLoughlin is carried from the wreckage and through the area where the rescuers are searching, they all offer words of encouragement and congratulation, a moving tribute to his survival and the way it has heartened them. But then Sergeant Strauss says to a colleague, "There's thousands of people still in there, Paddy. Where the hell are they?"

Numerous Surgeries

Before the closing credits, "World Trade Center" notes that Officer Jimeno underwent eight surgeries in a span of 13 days and Sergeant McLoughlin endured 27 different operations.

It was their cooperation and their wives' that informed the film, and Mr. Danese said of his two now-retired members, "They were ecstatic that the movie came out."

Asked how they are physically, he replied, "Will is doing much better than John." Noting the pronounced limp with which Mr. Cage moved at a celebration barbecue at the end of the movie, Mr. Danese said, "John definitely has problems walking."

The movie fades out with a listing of the Port Authority cops who died, and the coda, "And for all those who fought, died and were wounded that day."