Early morning in New York and before police chief John McLouglin (Cage) delivers a Hill St Blues ‘let’s be careful out there’ speech, he checks on his sleeping family. It sets him up as an everyman with cares and concerns like most of us. It is intended to make his survival all the more dramatic, more human and more accessible. It simply makes it more Hollywood.

World Trade Center comes off the back of United 93 as the first to tackle the emotional minefield of 9/11. Stories like these need a voice but for thousands are simply too painful to hear. Unlike the harrowing line taken by Paul Greengrass, Stone opts for a traditional, easier, more familiar route. He stays with McLoughlin. There’s little resonance with the greater tragedy and while that makes for easier viewing, it is considerably less affecting.

Once McLoughlin and a young officer are trapped in the rubble, many gruelling hours are spent wondering and worrying: by the men, their wives, their families. It is here that World Trade Center reveals its hand and becomes little more than a disaster movie on a personal scale. Stone’s focus on this small group of people is so tight that the larger story is not allowed in. Even their extended family are little more than set-dressing: an officer’s ever present mother is never given a single line. Swap New York for Beaconsfield and you’d have a very similar film. World Trade Center is a confident and well made film, but is not really about 9/11. It is about trapped people. It is about courage and faith. Foremost, it is a disaster movie.

// COLIN FRASER