While I'm on the subject of film....

Oliver Stone's WORLD TRADE CENTER.

Shameless, shameless, shameless.

Let it be said that I went under duress and already expecting to hate what I saw - however, to be fair, I allowed myself to be talked into the thing, if only to confirm my suspicians. Such sentimental trash. Disheartening to read a review in The Economist which says "the film contents itself with a tribute to the working-class heroism that shone out of the black hole of the event". Our poor working class Nicholas Cage, just as painful to watch as ever, with his Long Island accent fading in and out; his special family moment, doing what working class men do - sawing wood with his son, smiling up at his wife who is contentedly cooking dinner; the heartwrenching worry over another mouth to feed.

All this adds up to is an elitest idea of what it means to be working class. A film that, in a sense, denigrates the individual men and women who responded to the World Trade Center disaster by lumping them into a 'class' and presenting them as one-dimensional stereotypes, in the form of wincing actor who daydreams of jesus and prays.

What else. Besides the absolutely juvenile film-making. An empty subway train to represent the people who were lost. The excruciating attention to providing a viewer with nothing more than the images we all saw on the nightly news, or heard about from New Yorkers. It was almost a primer to the day. Beautiful morning. Check. Shadow of a plane. Check. Papers falling. Got that. Man falling. In the can.

All in all, a film meant to become a classic. Shown to schoolchildren of the future - forever linking the attack on the World Trade Center with a call to American Patriotism and the war on Iraq. (Where is the natural conclusion to the tag about the religious Marine going on to serve two tours of duty in Iraq - namely, 'a nation that had nothing to do with the attack".

I only write this out of frustration with all of these positive reviews that I keep seeing.