Let's face it--if you're a nobody typist at, say, Rottentomatoes, looking to make your bones by trashing an easy target, Charlie Sheen is about as good as it gets. And if Charlie's little drama is framed by the momentous events of 9-11, you have the irresistible opportunity to climb way up on your high horse and damn it as cheesy, awful, and exploitative.
9-11, the tense drama of five people trapped in a north tower elevator of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, is none of those things. It is suspenseful, well-written, moving, and the acting is solid. I mean, why wouldn't you tell the story of people trapped in those elevators, or a hundred other stories that happened in those towers on that day? People DIED in those elevators, and they have stories to tell.
There have been at least 182 films of every conceivable genre with World War 2 as the background--drama, suspense, thriller, action, comedy, super-hero, mystery, supernatural, ZOMBIE--yet, I cannot recall a single review that accused any of them of exploiting those 80 million deaths to lend their movie some gravitas.
The cast rocks. Charlie Sheen, Gina Gershon (who should have an Oscar nomination coming--she really brings it), Wood Harris, Luis Guzman, Whoopie Goldberg, Olga Fonda, they're all terrific. This was shot on a shoestring budget, so these performances were shot quickly, perhaps after a period of rehearsal, and yet they don't miss a moment. If I have a beef, it's with the sound. The hard surfaces inside an elevator set create a lot of reverb, and sound could use some additional filtering before the digital media release.
All the positives aside, douche nozzles such as the bunch at Rottentomatoes have reputations to make; moreover, judging from the paltry number of reviews, the producers probably couldn't afford a nice cruise junket. So here we are with a solid little film that scores only 14 percent at RT, whilst 86 percent of Google viewers liked it. That ought to tell you something.
Whatever. It'll be gone from the big screens faster than you can sneeze, but they're going to love it on Netflix.
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