`WORLD TRADE CENTER' STANDS AS RESPECTFUL TRIBUTE.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Critic

Perfectly respectful and respectable, ``World Trade Center'' may not be the Oliver Stone movie either his fans or his enemies had anticipated. Most significantly, where's the anger?

The film is far too dramatic to need any of that, of course. It's the story of two Port Authority policemen, Sgt. John McLoughlin and Officer Will Jimeno, who were trapped under tons of rubble when the World Trade Center towers collapsed on Sept. 11, 2001, and were eventually among the handful rescued alive.

Starring Nicolas Cage as McLoughlin and ``Crash's'' Michael Pena as Jimeno, the movie, which opens today, persuasively captures the injured men's struggle to stay alive in the burning, shifting wreckage, their loved ones' agonizing wait for word of their fates, the fantastic efforts of rescue workers both official and (significantly for this story) not, and the general air of shock and fear that permeated the worst day in most living Americans' memory.

But no anger. Nor, as I recall, a single acknowledgment, except maybe on a broadcast report, that Islamic terrorists may have been responsible. As I said, the story doesn't require rancor. But in a piece that otherwise strives for as much realism as a pricey Hollywood production permits, it's a noticeable absence.

``WTC'' is very Hollywood in the best ways: Straightforward storytelling (something else Stone's not always noted for), artful performances that don't overwhelm the distinctive qualities of the real-life characters, fantastic production values and camera work that serve the events being depicted above all rather than the director's often loony aesthetic whims.

And, most crucial, a real-life happy ending tied to an event of incalculable sorrow.

I can only say ``wow'' about Andrea Berloff's first produced screenplay. In a matter-of-fact manner, she rigorously lays out the well-known events from the limited viewpoints of those directly involved. This not only makes us feel like we know these men and women, but their varying perspectives remind us of how huge and inconceivable the tragedy was.

The script also informs the film's most indelible images. McLoughlin and his team's ground-up view as they march toward the smoking towers -- surreal, floating rain of paper and ash, the threat of harder falling debris, their reactions to the ghastly sight of a jumper -- alone settle the argument of whether or not movies should be made. And we've never been taken inside like this, as we are with them, when the buildings collapse.

Once McLoughlin and Jimeno are pinned by broken concrete and steel, it's all purgatorial shadows and flame-spits and grime. Immobilized, Cage and Pena have to essentially act verbally through much of the movie, and theirs become bravura performances of incremental perfection.

You get the feeling that the two actors could have sustained the life-preserving conversation without interruption. And it would have been artistically audacious for Stone to keep us in the pit with them -- kind of like the third act of ``United 93'' -- but also unbearably oppressive.

Rather, that shrewd script keeps removing us to flashbacks and cutaways involving the men's families, in happier times and anxiously coping with the current situation. Maria Bello and Maggie Gyllenhaal as, respectively, Donna McLoughlin and Allison Jimeno, build many dimensions into their portraits of two wives who, really, only have one thing to worry about. What can I tell you? Their tears become ours.

And as the individual who plays a key role in McLoughlin and Jimeno's deliverance, Michael Shannon reminded me of one of Hollywood's most enduring icons, John Wayne's Ethan Edwards from ``The Searchers.'' He's the closest thing to a nut in the movie. And watch: The right-wing pundits who are trying to hijack this most apolitical of politically significant films will likely reduce its most complex character to a simplistic hero figure.

< Some of Stone's more traditional supporters, on the other hand, have been sneering that ``WTC'' is the radical director's attempt to make like Ron Howard. That's both cynical beyond measure and creatively dead wrong. It's truer to life and more subtly crafted than that. Plus, there's more mature discipline in this than in anything else Stone's ever made -- hardly a case of Opie Dei.

Welcome as all of this is after so many Stone cold freakouts, I hope that the outrage so evident in his more partisan films returns the next time he takes on a disturbing subject. ``WTC'' wants to have a healing effect, and we can all certainly use one movie like that about 9/11. But now that it's here, it's time for Stone -- and Hollywood -- to move forward with even more courage and honesty.

Bob Strauss, [phone]

bob.strauss(at)dailynews.com

WORLD TRADE CENTER - Three and one half stars

(PG-13: violence, language)

Starring: Nicolas Cage, Michael Pena, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Maria Bello, Jay Hernandez, Michael Shannon.

Director: Oliver Stone.

Running time: 2 hr. 5 min.

Playing: In wide release.

In a nutshell: Conventional yet expertly presented docudrama about two New York Port Authority policemen who were saved from the ruins of the World Trade Center, and their families' and rescuers' experiences.

CAPTION(S):

3 photos

Photo:

(1 -- 2 -- color) New York Port Authority Sgt. John McLoughlin (Nicolas Cage, left) and Port Authority Officer Will Jimeno (Michael Pena) lay trapped under mountains of debris in Oliver Stone's ``World Trade Center,'' opening today.

(3 -- color) On the set, Pena, third from left, and his real-life counterpart, Trade Center survivor Jimeno, fourth from left, gaze up at the smoking towers as ash and bits of paper rain down on them. Jimeno was a consultant on ``World Trade Center'' and appears in some of the film's scenes.