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9/11: 10 Years Later (2011)
A very touching inside view
I have seen this documentary a couple of times, and have been equally spellbound and touched both times.
Film makers Gedeon and Jules Naudet and James Hanlon happen to be on New York's Engine 7, Ladder 1 firehouse in Lower Manhattan, just next to the Twin Towers, making a documentary about the firefighters. They are filming on 9/11 and are suddenly captured and capturing the events very much in the middle of everything.
This documentary not only catches the chaos and horror of the event up close, but also takes its time to let the firefighters talk about their experiences. The bad ones of the fire, the effort to get into and up in the buildings, the falling bodies, the collapses and the whole catastrophe itself. But also the relief of meeting colleagues after the collapses where all firefighters of the firehouse miraculously survived (their words, not mine).
The event, the aftermath and the whole effort of looking for survivors and cleaning up is covered very close and very touching - not to mention the interviews made with the men years later, where the deeply rooted traumas still effect their lives. The film also covers another aspect of the event: the health problems that the firefighters suffer because of the dust and smoke that they were exposed to during their work on September 11th 2001. It has a slight tendency to become sentimental towards the end, but nothing bad and nothing over the top.
I certainly don't enjoy seeing this terrible event rolled out again or hearing the stories of the many horrendous experiences, but as a documentary this gets as close to both the people and the incident as it's possible. The footage from the day itself shot with a shaken camera through a lens covered in dust from the fire and the collapse is just amazing – fascinating and terrifying at the same time.
Altogether a well made documentary.
Ice (2011)
Too unlikely
It's too bad that Ice fails so miserably on all fronts when it comes to being in any way convincing. The resources and the potential was there, but were so terribly misused.
While watching it tonight I found myself registering unrealistic scenarios and situations rather than watching it as the environmental thriller it was supposed to be. It seems to have had nice resources and both sets and effects are actually OK. Acting isn't great, but on the other hand not worse than seen in many other of these mini-series.
But the disaster and its results? A true disaster!
One single oil drill puncturing hot vents under the inland ice, which then melts in a matter of hours? Really? Has anybody ever looked at the amount of energy it takes to melt ice? The inland ice on Greenland being kilometers thick and the size of... well, Greenland. I'd say decades rather than hours, even with hot vents.
The inland ice cracking like an eggshell. Really? Again... it's kilometers thick. It doesn't crack like inch-thick ice on your local lake.
The legal consultant constantly being in the lab and on the drill rig in Greenland and not in some nice, warm office in the center of London? Really? A paper-pusher and desk jockey like her would never need to go there to do her job.
The boss of all bosses trying to drive the giant rig on belts out of the danger zone? Really? He might go there to be present during the crisis, but being able to operate the rig... hardly.
The professor and the legal consultant examining the ice (what's she doing there at all?) and then swimming under the ice to a nearby hole, and not only surviving that, but also being able to fight off the armed guy wanting to kill them, survive a fall over a cliff on a ski-doo AND walk back to the station through the snow storm at night. And the only damage is a pair of frost-bitten fingers - which get saved by an Asian scientist who BTW is miraculously present with a colleague and rescues them as they crawl "over the edge" of the inland ice. Really?
And that's only in the first episode.
In the second and final episode London freezes to minus 40 deg. C in a matter of hours and our heroes fly out of the Arctic and to England in a small one-engine plane in a constant blizzard, crash land (conveniently near the M1 just outside London) and crawl out of the shattered and burning plane - unharmed of course - all while the professor's family frees his wife who has been imprisoned in London for being an illegal immigrant, as an American citizen married to a Brit. They of course get trapped under the glacier forming as a result of the "instant ice age". Over them it threatens to flatten the whole building and covers it several floors up, while the same snow leaves the rest of London as a snow covered fairytale landscape with all houses visible. Of course they manage to burn their way out by breaking the gas pipes and setting fire to the gas - using the broken bulb in a flashlight. Really?
Meanwhile the professor and the lawyer are walking through snow covered London (in full arctic gear AND snowshoes. They crashed with a plane just before, remember?). The only people they meet shoot at them for no obvious reason. Really?
And finally the family slides down the snow on the side of the tall building, chased by an avalanche, but winds up right in Dad's arms. Happy reunion, all alone in London, the 7.5 million Londoners mysteriously gone. The clouds part, the sun breaks through. Let's go south. Really?
Really!?
Ice is simply so stupid, so exaggerated, so unlikely and so unrealistic that it makes no sense! The only reason I watched it to the end was to get most possible details for this review.
Too bad as I said... the resources were there, but were so terribly wasted. Save yourself the agony. Watch something else.