John McLoughlin (Nicolas Cage, right) and Will Jimeno (Michael Pena, left) view the devastation at Ground Zero on 9/11. Click photo for larger image. 'World Trade Center' Rating: PG-13 for intense and emotional content, some disturbing images and language. Starring: Nicolas Cage, Michael Pena. Director: Oliver Stone. Related stories: Family Film Guide: 'World Trade Center' 'WTC' role hit home for actress Bello (08/08/06) Web site: View trailer at www.wtcmovie.com/ Listen in: Click on the links to hear the PG's Barbara Vancheri discussing "World Trade Center": The emotional impact of watching 9/11 movies Should children see "World Trade Center?"

The sun is blotted out, momentarily, by the airplane streaking through the sky. Its shadow falls ominously across a building, leaving an invisible but indelible footprint and a roar in its wake.

Will Jimeno (Michael Pena) and others on the street automatically turn toward the sound, while those inside are jolted by a thud and a rumble. The world is slipping off its axis, lurching into a place where 9/11 will symbolize the worst and the best of mankind.

Jimeno and Sgt. John McLoughlin (Nicolas Cage) from the Port Authority Police will head to the World Trade Center and become trapped, pinned under massive slabs of concrete and twisted metal. They're buried alive, 20 feet below the rubble, and no one can see or hear them. They can't even see each other.

Pain keeps them awake. They keep each other alive. "You die, I'm gonna die," McLoughlin tells Jimeno, who fears he won't make it.

Director Oliver Stone tells their real-life story in "World Trade Center," opening today. It's the second 9/11 movie to arrive in theaters in less than four months but it transports us to Ground Zero while "United 93" took us inside the hijacked jet that crashed in Shanksville, Somerset County.

Just as all Pearl Harbor movies are not alike, neither are these two. "United 93" ended in terror, death and patriotic sacrifice, while "World Trade Center" ends with life, courage on the part of rescuers who had no guarantee they wouldn't be maimed or killed, and the start of a long recovery.

The Paul Greengrass re-creation had no big names. "WTC" features Oscar-winner Cage, breakout actresses Maria Bello and Maggie Gyllenhaal along with rising star Pena, the locksmith in "Crash" who is a standout here.

The movie opens before dawn, as the men make their way to work, where the older, more experienced McLoughlin issues the boilerplate reminder that will echo through the hours: "As always, protect yourselves, watch each other's backs."

Rescue workers make their way through the destruction in Oliver Stone's "World Trade Center." Click photo for larger image.

After the first plane hits the tower, the Port Authority Police are asked to send a team to assist a commuter plane mishap. When they arrive at the World Trade Center, they realize the hell they are volunteering to evacuate and, when the buildings fall, McLoughlin and Jimeno are the only ones still alive.

The balance of the movie toggles between their claustrophobic confinement and what is happening with their families and rescuers, notably an ex-Marine and accountant from Connecticut named Dave Karnes (Michael Shannon).

In the blackness of this confessional, McLoughlin and Jimeno swap stories about their families, the choice of a name for the younger man's unborn daughter, the unexpected but blessed arrival of the older couple's fourth child, a kitchen renovation still unfinished.

Stone, aided by an evocative score by Craig Armstrong, masterfully reinvents New York on this fateful day. The re-creation is so good that it's as if the characters had been inserted into news footage.

Much of the movie was shot in New York, but the production designer and crew constructed Ground Zero at the former home of Hughes Aircraft Co. in Playa Vista, Calif., using Styrofoam reinforced with urethane and augmented with actual twisted metal.

READERS' FORUM Where were you on Sept. 11, 2001?

As the fifth anniversary of 9/11 approaches, and with the release of the movie "World Trade Center," we find ourselves looking back at that terrible day. Where were you? What were you doing? How did you find out what was happening? What has it meant to you over the past five years?

If you'd like to share your 9/11 memory for possible publication, e-mail us at postscript@post-gazette.com. Put 9/11 in the subject field and be sure to include your name and neighborhood or home town.

Adding verisimilitude are Port Authority and New York police and firefighters who were at Ground Zero. Watching the movie, I thought Karnes was a composite character, a disciplined, muscular G.I. Joe come to life, but he turns out to be a real Marine with a stiff sense of duty and mission.

Stone's skills outstrip those of Andrea Berloff; this is her first produced screenplay. She has to paint the overview and then shift from anxious household to anxious household, the towers and the rescuers, trying to do justice at each stop.

Since the movie is based on actual accounts of the surviving participants, it seems unfair to criticize what isn't there -- Jimeno and McLoughlin wondering, for instance, what caused the calamity that entombed them. The observation of one TV viewer, "I don't know if you guys know it or not, but this country's at war," may be accurate but seems omniscient.

I wanted more about the aftermath, how two men who were the 18th and 19th of 20 people pulled from the rubble dealt with this second chance at life, how they handled lingering physical injuries, emotional wounds and the death of friends.

They've fielded those questions in interviews, but I guess that would make for a different movie. Or one that certainly would be longer, but perhaps even more inspirational than this one.