Salvador. JFK. Comandante. We watch Oliver Stone films to be enraged, challenged and provoked, right? Stone can take credit for shunning personal politics to make the first Hollywood Twin Towers movie a human story: that of cops John McLoughlin (Nicolas Cage) and Will Jimeno (Michael Peña), numbers 18 and 19 of only 20 survivors pulled from Ground Zero. But people looking for a glimmer of Stone’s ego and politics showing through the respectful façade will be disappointed. World Trade Center is a competent disaster movie, little more; an effective study of the will to survive if never deeply emotive, challenging or provocative.

DVD Extras:

So why buy World Trade Center on DVD unless you’re a Stone completist? To be entertained? Those who cried “sell-out” can listen to his commentary – a device for his own self-defence. The real characters give their own moving takes during the featurettes, while Stone manages to draw parallels with Platoon. “It’s a very fine line between being a soldier in Vietnam and a cop in the World Trade Center,” he says. Is it really? It’s the chat-track by Jimeno and his emergency service rescuers that transforms the disc: first-person perspectives more honest and compelling than anything Stone could render dramatically.