They were the 18th and 19th of the 20 rescued from the rubble after the buildings collapsed. Port Authority Police Officers Will Jimeno, played by Crash actor Micheal Pena, was 18, and John McLoughlin, played by Oscar winner Nicholas Cage, was number 19.
The movie centers around their story of survival, and how they deal with their world that has literally crashed down around them. The tag line of the film reads, “The World Saw Evil That Day. Two Men Saw Something Else.”
The movie begins with Cage’s character waking early for his day of work at the Times Square Port Authority. It starts off with such silence, almost like a kind of calm before the storm. It’s interesting to see these men begin their normal day, not knowing the events that are about to unfold. To avoid any spoilers, I’ll wrap the plot up by saying that a good portion of the movie deals with the wives of the two officers, played by Maria Bello and Maggie Gyllenhaal, and it shows rather intensely the wait they were put through throughout that day.
I have to admit that the movie wasn’t what I thought it would be, but kind of in a good way. There were no sensational images of the planes hitting the towers (like we could forget what it looked like), and neither were there images of the towers coming down except for a quick shot shown on a television inside a home. It wasn’t focused on the what of it all, but just the who of it all. It focused on the heros of the day, of that time.
It was quite a moving film, as you can expect. I fought back tears through the majority, but then, at the very end as the theater lights were coming up, tears came. On the screen were just words, listing off the number that died that day. The number of countries affected. Words that summed up the characters lives in the present. How one of the marines in the film served two tours of duty after 9/11. And the admiration kind of got me.
9/11 MEMORIAL IN ‘04
Below are some pictures we took during a memorial on 9/11/04, the year I lived in NYC. Some friends and I went down there early that morning, making it in time for the first moment of silence when the first plane hit (which was around 8 a.m.). The first moment of silence was followed by three more, one for the second tower hit and two at the precise moments each of the towers fell. The moments of silence began with church bells ringing nearby and all across the city. After the bells rang, complete and utter, and almost eerie, slience. Those were probably the only four moments I ever heard complete silence in the city.
The sight was insane. One lady marched down the sidewalk with her politics on her sleeve, and a man turned back to her and quietly said, “This isn’t the time and place for that.” Others clung to the gate that surrounds the site, listening to former Mayor Giuliani and present Mayor Bloomberg speak words of honor and sadness to the thousands of New Yorkers gathered that day.
You could pick out those people who knew someone that was killed that day. Their faces were a little sadder, their tears a little heavier. People came with cards and flowers to pay their respects. My friends and I just kind of stood there, not really knowing what to do or how to feel. For that period of time, we were New Yorkers, and we felt pride in our city and even a little sad that we weren’t there for our fellow New Yorkers on that day three years earlier.
Three years earlier, I was still at UAM, and I was woken up by my radio alarm like I am every morning. It had gone off just in time for me to hear the news that the first tower had been hit. I didn’t learn the extent of the damage until class began that morning. I had no idea then that New York would become my second home. When I moved there years later, I arrived with only one real memory of New York, and that was where I was when their world came crashing down.
The fire station directly next to the WTC site. They were the first on the scene after the attacks.
The street on the East side of the site. This is the a small part of the crowd there that day. They actually showed this street in a couple of shots during the movie.
The only beam left standing. Hope in devastation. It’s always there.
A t-shirt in the crowd.
A view of the inside of the site of all the people there that day. The entire site is gated off due to construction, however, people were let inside for the memorial, and that’s where the mayors spoke from.
They’re going to be great!
-m
t
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