Acclaimed 9/11 film opens in US

Controversial director Oliver Stone’s film about the devastating September 11 attacks opens in the US tonight.

The release of World Trade Center, which tells the true story of two police officers trapped under the rubble of the collapsed Twin Towers for hours, has prompted concerns it is still too soon for America to see such harrowing events recreated on the big screen.

Some relatives of victims have spoken of how seeing the movie would be far too distressing for them, while others have criticised its makers for not doing more to help their causes.

Paramount Pictures is to donate 10% of all box office takings from its first five days to four 9/11 charities.

Monica Iken, who lost her husband Michael in the attacks and runs the group September’s Mission, said she was “very disappointed” with that figure and asked the studio to consider giving more.

The film has received widely enthusiastic reviews, including from right-wing publications considered more naturally inclined to be offended by Stone’s efforts.

He has previously been accused of politicising history in JFK, Nixon and his films about Vietnam.

Stone said his film was about heroism, and that there had been no room for editorialising.

“I was looking for a truth about how people survive,” he said.

“It was an inspiration because it was a true story…You couldn’t have made it up.”

He added: “I try to do things as accurately as possible. I know that I’m controversial, but I’ve always made the same effort.

“I was in their world. I was not putting my own interpretation on it.”

Port Authority Police Officer John McLoughlin, played by Nicholas Cage, led a team of five officers into the concourse between the two towers just before the south tower collapsed.

Cage and Michael Pena, as Officer Will Jimeno, spend most of the movie trapped underground, caked in dust and ash and trying to talk to each other to stay alive.

After 22 hours, McLoughlin was one of the last of 20 people to be pulled from the towers alive.

McLoughlin and Jimeno’s colleague, Dominick Pezzulo, also survived the first tower’s collapse but was later killed when the second tower collapsed.

His widow is among those who said the film had come too soon and was too graphic.

Another relative, Carie Lemack, whose mother Judy Larocque was a passenger on one of the hijacked flights, said she had been forced to run from cinemas when she realised the trailer for World Trade Center was about to be screened.

“I don’t want to see my mother’s murder,” she said.

“Some of us just don’t need it.

“We need a break and it’s everywhere. It’s just so pervasive and it’s so hard.”

A community group, World Cares Center, is holding weekly group discussions for survivors or others who have difficulty with the film’s recreation of the attacks.

Executive director Lisa Orloff said many felt its release so close to the fifth anniversary of the atrocities was insensitive.

Other relatives were won over, however.

Lee Ielpi, who worked for nine months recovering bodies from Ground Zero, including that of his firefighter son, had been concerned that the film might be a “Hollywood glitz production”.

In the end he approved of it.

“It portrayed in a small sense the horribleness of that day and what the people had to go through,” he said.

The filmmakers spent almost a year talking to family members and city leaders in a bid to gauge community reaction in New York.

McLoughlin and Jimeno acted as paid consultants to the film.

Maggie Gyllenhaal and Maria Bello star as the officers’ wives.