Review – 9/11

Here’s the ultimate proof of the new, 21st century key to successful journalism: skill and talent often aren’t half as important as having the luck to be in the right place at the right time. Here we have two French guys with low-end-professional video cameras who just happened to be making a documentary about New York City firefighters in the Summer and Fall of 2001. Along comes September 11 and transforms their run-of-the-mill production into some of the most compelling images ever captured on tape. The footage shot inside the towers as the firefighters try desperately to get a grip on the situation is alone worth the price of the rental. And when the tower collapses around them … well, you just have to see it for yourself. Some of this documentary is a little hard to watch, and especially toward the end veers unnecessarily into the sentimental (the video speaks for itself, so there’s really no need to drop “Danny Boy” onto the soundtrack). I came into this thinking it was somewhat pretentious to call a movie “9/11,” as if this was the only documentary that could ever be made on the subject (which of course it isn’t). But what these guys captured at Ground Zero actually merits the title they gave it. Worth seeing