Blarney Rubble:
The two cops are eventually rescued by a rogue marine named Dave Karnes. Karnes isn't just any first responder—in fact, he's retired from the service. But he's been called by God to pull on his camo and descend on Ground Zero without credentials or safety equipment. (His revelation comes in a pew at Pentecost—religious viewers are expected to overlook the fact that Pentecost occurs in the spring.) This footman of the apocalypse, played with hokey gravitas by Michael Shannon, tends to say things like, "I don't know if you guys know yet, but this country's at war." (Did God tell you that, buddy?) Better yet: "Looks like God made a curtain with the smoke, shielding us from what we're not yet ready to see." (Is that like when Oliver Stone fades to black five times in one movie?) But my single biggest complaint about World Trade Center is the way it uses the Karnes character to link 9/11 with the war in Iraq. After all the drama is over, Karnes swells with righteous anger. "Gonna need some good men out there. To avenge this," he announces gruffly, his pronouns damning in their lack of specificity. Then, immediately before the credits roll, Karnes gets his own title card: "DAVE KARNES RE-ENLISTED IN THE MARINES AND SERVED TWO TOURS OF DUTY IN IRAQ." The truth is sloppy, I'm sure, but this kind of causal carelessness is absolutely unforgivable, especially when so many Americans still believe that Saddam Hussein had some hand in 9/11.
