`WORLD TRADE CENTER' WON'T DISAPPOINT LEFT.

Byline: ED RAMPELL Local View

OLIVER Stone's ``World Trade Center'' is among the greatest disaster movies ever shot, although it's much more than a special-effects spectacle. This masterpiece returns the director of ``Platoon,'' ``Born on the Fourth of July'' and ``Salvador'' to Hollywood's front ranks and the frontlines of films about touchy subjects that raise troubling questions.

But much to the surprise and disappointment of many of Stone's progressive fans, this film isn't a political treatise. Nor does it include the conspiracy theory many may have been hoping for.

After all, Stone helmed 1991's ``JFK,'' wherein he left no stone unturned in debunking the Warren Commission/lone gunman/``magic bullet'' Kennedy assassination narrative with a countervailing argument that rogue CIA and other government insiders staged a 20th century coup d'etat. Yet this time, Stone steers clear of speculation about what ``really'' happened on Sept. 11.

It's easy to understand why. Stone's ``counter-myth'' to the establishment's Kennedy liquidation story earned him vicious character assassination. Once bitten, twice shy.

Stone also has much riding on ``WTC,'' career-wise, after his 2004 ``Alexander the Great'' biopic under-performed at the box office. He is probably under enormous pressure for the $63 million ``WTC'' to be a blockbuster, and Paramount Pictures and its parent company, Viacom Inc., seem desperate to avoid controversy regarding a sensitive subject. Universal's lower-budget ``United 93,'' which had no big stars and depicted the plane that went down in Pennsylvania on Sept. 11, made only $31 million.

Paramount and Viacom have lobbied lawmakers such as Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., assuring them that ``WTC'' is neither a political nor conspiratorial movie. CNBC reports that an 11th-hour, $35 million advertising campaign is targeting both teens and Christian conservatives. Perhaps with this in mind, in ``WTC'' Michael Shannon portrays Dave Karnes, an ex-Marine who is religiously inspired to suit up and go on a one-man rescue mission at ground zero, posing as an active duty leatherneck. Karnes later re-enlisted and served in Iraq.

But political and financial pressures notwithstanding, ``WTC'' still has many progressive themes. They're just more subtle than in Stone's past works.

``WTC'' opens with just another morning as unsuspecting commuters rise and head toward Manhattan. Nicolas Cage and Michael Pena portray Sgt. John McLoughlin and rookie Will Jimeno (based on real Port Authority police officers). Suddenly, a jet's shadow zooms across a high-rise; booms are heard. A veteran of 1993's WTC bombing, McLoughlin leads a detachment from Midtown's Bus Terminal to Downtown's disaster site.

En route, a second plane strikes the South Tower. Arriving at the WTC amid mass carnage and confusion, the policemen see someone falling from the towering inferno. Nevertheless, the men in blue press on to the concourse, where McLoughlin asks for volunteers to rescue people stranded above.

``I got it, sarge,'' says the rookie.

As Jimeno, McLoughlin and others enter hell's gates, viewers who know what will literally befall the first responders can't help but be moved. At the screening I attended, two women brought tissue boxes and offered Kleenexes to audience members -- it was here this native New Yorker needed eye-wipe No. 1.

It was the first of many Kleenex moments.

As the Twin Towers collapse, Jimeno and McLoughlin are trapped by rubble. Pinned down, they fight for their lives, and Stone opens up the action to their flashbacks and those left behind. Personal stories unfold. Coping with the unraveling Armageddon, the cops' families are brave in their own ways.

But WTC is no tear-jerker -- or gung-ho flag waver. This homage to ordinary people's extraordinary courage could have ended with President George W. Bush's bullhorn speech atop ground zero's remains, but Stone knows that with turmoil in Afghanistan, Iraq and much of the Middle East, the presidential bravado rings hollow today. Instead, the wise director ends ``WTC'' on a note of hope and solidarity.

As Cage says: ``9-11 showed us what humans are capable of -- the evil, yeah, sure, but it also brought out a goodness we forgot could exist. People taking care of each other, for no other reason than it was the right thing to do. It's important for us to talk about that good, to remember, because I saw a lot of it that day.''

``WTC'' may be closest to Stone's other Lower Manhattan movie, 1987's ``Wall Street,'' starring Charlie Sheen, who goes-for-broker when bullish Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas) pronounces: ``Greed is good.'' Charlie plays the son of blue-collar worker Martin Sheen (his off-screen father and activist). Stone, the son of a Wall Streeter, extols the proletariat's virtues in ``Wall Street'' and ``WTC,'' where plebeians, not patricians, are working-class heroes.

And if 2004's ``Alexander'' was Stone's rumination on empire, ``World Trade Center'' is about the ramifications of being the sole superpower.

The 9-11 Commission Report provides an example of something that spurred al-Qaida to unleash its terror on America that day: ``It is telling that ... bin Laden declared the presence of kufr (infidel) soldiers on Saudi soil to be the ultimate source of his wrath. This led to his contention that `there is no more important duty than pushing the American enemy out of the holy land.'''

One can't query 9-11's dead, but I wish someone would poll survivors and families to ask if they think stationing U.S. troops near Mecca was worth the 3,000 lives lost in the World Trade Center. Especially considering that on April 29, 2003, President George W. Bush withdrew them from Saudi Arabia, giving Osama what he'd sought since his 1996 ``declaration of jihad against the Americans occupying the land of the two holy mosques'' anyway.

Those who poke provoking sticks into hornets' nests will get stung -- with common Joes bearing the brunt. Oliver Stone's fine film reminds us of that.

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(color) Oliver Stone with Nicolas Cage on the set of ``World Trade Center.''