World Trade Center
Paramount Pictures | Release Date: August 9, 2006 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
66
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 40 Critic Reviews
Positive:
29
Mixed:
11
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
90
NewsweekDavid Ansen
World Trade Center celebrates the ties that bind us, the bonds that keep us going, the goodness that stands as a rebuke to the horror of that day. Perhaps, in the future, the times will call for more challenging, or polemical, or subversive visions. Right now, it feels like the 9/11 movie we need. Read full review
90
The Hollywood ReporterKirk Honeycutt
This is a film of terrific selectivity. By focusing on two of the few who did survive the collapse, the film achieves emotional power and an uplifting ending. Read full review
90
TimeRichard Schickel
Very simply, World Trade Center is a powerful movie experience, a hymn in plainsong that glorifies that which is best in the American spirit. Read full review
90
The New York TimesDana Stevens
Mr. Stone has taken a public tragedy and turned it into something at once genuinely stirring and terribly sad. His film offers both a harrowing return to a singular, disastrous episode in the recent past and a refuge from the ugly, depressing realities of its aftermath. Read full review
88
New York Daily NewsJack Mathews
It's as harrowing as moviegoing gets. Read full review
88
ReelViewsJames Berardinelli
World Trade Center is Stone's most potent motion picture since "Platoon," and may be the most accessible across-the-board since "Wall Street." Read full review
88
Charlotte ObserverLawrence Toppman
The strong personalities of Maria Bello and Maggie Gyllenhaal, who play typical supportive wives, keep scenes from sagging. Read full review
88
Philadelphia InquirerCarrie Rickey
The script by Andrea Berloff is stunning in its simplicity and aching details. Read full review
83
Seattle Post-IntelligencerWilliam Arnold
The lack of stellar performances gradually becomes a virtue of the movie as we forget we're watching actors in roles, and Stone builds a documentarylike veracity that gives the saga of the trapped cops and their loved ones a riveting immediacy. Read full review
83
Christian Science MonitorPeter Rainer
At its best it shares with Stone's finest work a feeling for the imminence of death and salvation. Read full review
80
The New YorkerDavid Denby
This square movie, at its best, is very powerful. Read full review
80
EmpireIan Nathan
Even without his box of political tricks, Oliver Stone remains the foremost cinematic shrink for America's distress. Read full review
75
Entertainment WeeklyOwen Gleiberman
A scrupulous and honorable film. Yet it never comes close to being a revelatory one; it sentimentalizes more than it haunts. Read full review
75
Rolling StonePeter Travers
Undeniably affecting, but you leave it wanting more. Read full review
75
Miami HeraldRene Rodriguez
A straightforward, earnest, sentimental picture: It's all the things you'd think a Sept. 11 movie directed by Oliver Stone would never be. Read full review
75
USA TodayClaudia Puig
Where "United 93" was a superb example of masterful storytelling, World Trade Center is a more conventional rendering. Read full review
75
Baltimore SunMichael Sragow
It may not tell us anything about terror in the new millennium, but the filmmakers' work is solid and affecting. In its own over-emphatic, sometimes clumsy way, it can move an audience to tears, cathartic laughs and cheers. Read full review
75
Boston GlobeTy Burr
One reason World Trade Center is such a good, healing cry is that it absolves us of the discomfort of thinking about everything that has happened since. Read full review
75
New York PostLou Lumenick
A physically impressive, well-acted, sometimes emotionally powerful - and mostly apolitical - re-creation of that awful day that has some conservative pundits praising Stone as some sort of born-again patriot. Read full review
75
Portland OregonianM. E. Russell
Where "United 93" was lean and merciless and got you thinking hard about how you might conduct yourself in a no-win situation, World Trade Center is reassuring. Read full review
70
VarietyBrian Lowry
World Trade Center yields lovely and touching moments but proves a slow-going, arduous movie experience. Read full review
70
Village VoiceJ. Hoberman
World Trade Center is Stone's rehabilitation. It's not just courage that's honored, it's God's Will. It isn't only men who are saved, it's their families -- and their family values. Read full review
70
Dallas ObserverRobert Wilonsky
Without being too glib about it, World Trade Center is a most improbable thing: an upbeat film about September 11, one of the few stories to emerge from that day to come with a happy ending. Read full review
70
The New RepublicStanley Kauffmann
Stone has concentrated on one of the catastrophe's stories and has fashioned it well--with almost palpable physical detail, and with performances that never sink to exploitation. Read full review
67
Austin ChronicleMarjorie Baumgarten
Although the conclusion is heavily sentimentalized, Stone finds the common ground Americans can rally around for relief from the devastation: We are, in the final analysis, good people. Read full review
63
Chicago TribuneMichael Phillips
Like Stone's "Platoon," World Trade Center has the visceral stuff it takes to appeal to audiences of all political stripes. Unlike "Platoon," however, its sense of craft feels impersonal. Read full review
63
TV Guide MagazineMaitland McDonagh
Stone, the master of the epic conspiracy and the operatic spectacle of diametrically opposed forces at war for men's souls, is so entangled in the trees that he's lost sight of the forest -- who could have imagined? Read full review
63
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Rick Groen
Despite the best efforts of the cast (Cage is especially evocative in a literally confined role), Stone can't disguise the fact that his movie, like his heroes, has come to a kinetic halt, stuck between a narrative rock and an emotional hard place. Read full review
63
PremiereAaron Hillis
Underscored by the fragility of a plinking piano and well-timed flourishes to uplift, this heroic heartstring-tugger is still frequently and unexpectedly affecting, so much that it's able to hide its true face as a glorified movie-of-the-week. Read full review
60
New York Magazine (Vulture)David Edelstein
A true story of courage and survival, yes. But viewing the destruction of the World Trade Center--in a film called World Trade Center--through this kind of prism represents a distinctly Hollywood brand of tunnel vision. Read full review
60
SalonStephanie Zacharek
Perhaps only a marginally effective movie about 9/11, because, I suspect, there can be no such thing as an effective movie about 9/11 -- at least not right now. Read full review
60
SlateDana Stevens
When Stone's movie is at its best, it simply ignores the temptation to say everything about 9/11, instead keeping its focus tightly trained on the two domestic dramas at its center. Read full review
50
Los Angeles TimesKenneth Turan
The problem is not so much that World Trade Center is an attempt to make a feel-good movie about a ghastly situation, it's that the result feels forced, manufactured and largely -- but not entirely -- unconvincing. Read full review
50
Wall Street JournalJoe Morgenstern
World Trade Center shows us many things we already know, though with impressive flair, then plunges underground for an unconvincing drama based on a multitude of facts. It's upbeat, all right, but badly off kilter.
50
Washington PostDesson Thomson
It telegraphs its emotions loud and clear, but somehow they don't reach us. Read full review
50
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalle
Stone does everything he can to do justice to the real-life people he's depicting, and yet nothing he does can cover up the film's single but overarching weakness: The personal story he uses to portray the larger event is limited in scope and impact. Read full review
50
L.A. WeeklyElla Taylor
World Trade Center is fatally benign -- an unexceptionable and therefore unexceptional heroic narrative that does little to further the tentative creep of our pop culture toward parsing the significance of that catastrophic day. Read full review
50
Chicago ReaderJonathan Rosenbaum
I don't question the legitimacy of celebrating the courage of these individuals and their families, and I can even tolerate the hokey nostalgia for World War II epics. But I'm troubled that the filmmakers have elided so much else of what happened on that day, as if it were some kind of neutral backdrop. Read full review
42
The A.V. ClubKeith Phipps
The politics of Stone's 9/11 movie lean right, if they lean any way at all. Mostly, the film sits up straight and just wants to be loved by all. There are more controversial Hallmark cards. Read full review
40
Film ThreatPete Vonder Haar
Almost unforgivably sentimental. Read full review
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