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A woman in the theatre started crying really loud when the buildings came crashing down. She totally lost it, and I couldn’t help feeling a little choked up, wondering how many people in the audience were watching the film thinking about the last minutes of people they knew. The scenes of the towers falling and papers flying through the air were quite well done.

But really, I spent most of the film trying not to laugh at the bad acting, ridiculous script, and superficial characters. And I still can’t figure out whether Nicolas Cage’s moustache was fake. Several people walked in late, there was loud slurping of straws, changing of shoes, and giggling. Don’t believe the hyped reviews that tell you people in New York are watching this film in the serenest of moods. At the movie theatre on Union Square they were still laughing about how crap it was when they walked out on the sidewalk.

Oliver Stone has arguably made the shittiest movie of his career about one of the most significant global events of the century. He’s always courted controversy, but the most controversial thing about the film World Trade Center is just how bad it is.

The weirdest character in the film is a US marine (cut and paste from Platoon?) who decides to travel to New York to help rescue people from the rubble, but only after spending a long time staring at a wooden cross – and getting a haircut. He talks about God a lot, doesn’t do anything to save people, shows off his marine knife, and then (we learn in the post script) he goes to Iraq to fight.

Iraq? What about Afghanistan, Bin Laden, or the Taliban? They’re never mentioned in the movie, which is pretty septic when it comes to politics except for a brief clip of George Bush, after the pet goat incident and before he gets swept away to safety. It’s a boring film, full of overly sentimental Americanisms, and poorly made flashbacks. It does no service to the victims or moviegoers, or to documenting what actually happened.