If there was ever a film where it could be considered a nuisance, it's this. Widely considered to be highly offensive and distasteful upon its release on Sept 8th 2017. This movie directed & written by Martin Guigui with help from co-writer Steven Golebiowski is notorious best remember for its casting of actor Charlie Sheen, a controversial Sept 11th conspiracy theorist as the lead role in their adaptation of playwright Patrick James Carson's stage play 'Elevator'. While, his acting is nothing new in the film as millionaire Jeffery Cage. His presence in this production and large amount of control of the script is highly jarring. I don't know why the director was so driven to get Sheen to pick this role; even after the actor first dismiss it. It's like if director Steven Spielberg really wanting to hired Holocaust denier author David Irving by offering him to rewrite the screenplay for 1993 'Schindler's List'. It's doesn't make sense. Either Martin is total insane madman or he's a secret genius doing this as a publicity stunt. After all, controversy did draw eyeballs to the product. That's how I found out about this movie. Nevertheless in the end, Sheen indeed took the job. Although, he apologized for some of his more offensive claims. He pretty much got his wish. Not only did the movie allow the outspoken advocate of the truth movement, a platform to hint the collapse of the WTC being a controlled destruction throughout the movie, but it also allow the actor to look like the serious dramatic performer. He did this to save face after years upon years of making himself look like a fool through his many infidelities, poor comedic roles, problems with the law, his awful public relationship with the media in which he call himself 'a winning warlock with tiger blood' while high on drugs and his troublesome outrageous backstage antics with producers. He got all the spotlight. In truth, the movie is supposed to be about a group of people stuck in a lift as the attacks on the World Trade Center unfolds around them. Yet, it center stage Sheen as Cage as the de facto conservative white messiah leader having to led the stereotypical poorly written clueless women like his soon to be ex-wife Eve (Gina Gershon) & trophy wife, Tina (Olga Fonda) & two bickering racist minorities like custodial engineer Eddie (Luis Guzman) & bike messenger Michael (Wood Harris) out of their unfortunate circumstances through cheesy and clunky lines of dialogue. The movie even ends with the character sacrificing his life, in order to do so without telling us if any of the other characters survived. It's essentially grandiose, exhibitionistic, and highly narcissistic. Just like Charlie Sheen in real life. It stick out like a sour thumb. Despite that, the other performers were alright in their acting with the limited time, they were given. With Whoopi Goldberg perhaps being the best from all of them. However, there is other reasons to hate the movie on, besides the mediocrity acting. One of them is the fact that instead of telling the true life story of any of the survivors or victims of the tragedy, the film chose instead to tell an imaginary one. Don't get me wrong, I know fictional films like 2011 'Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close' or even 2010 'Remember Me' used elements of the event as well. However, 9/11 wasn't those film's main focus. In this movie, the unfolding of the disaster is ever so presence. It really needed to be historical accurate. The event should had been told by people who were there rather than a script student from Pima Community College in Tuscon, Arizona. It's sad, because there were real life people being stuck in an elevator that day that could had needed the limelight. Their stories were interesting. Yet, for a number of reasons, this made up one is not. One big mistake is adding unneeded drama and action to the already built up intense film. Moments like the 'Tower of Terror' like freefall look highly hilarious with the film's low budget green scenes & wired work. Also, the movie felt a need to drag with the characters having a 'Breakfast Club' style discussion between them. For a flick that has a run time of 90 minutes, it certainly has a lot of fitter and padding. The director really does used the archive news footage of the events, a little too much. To the point that the film was condemned by survivors, politicians, and celebrities for using the tragedy for financial gain. I have to somewhat agree. I would have love to see whatever made profits from this movie go to New York City charities or the victim's families rather than Hollywood big heads. This film stinks of exploitation. Thank goodness, it became a box office flop. Not even Sheen bother going to the premiere. Overall: While, we should never forget what happen on Sept 11th 2001. I think it might be best to forget that this movie existed. In the end, this is one flick not worth remembering.

I'm guessing that at some point in the production process of this film someone considered making it a musical, thus touching every base in awfulness. It has Whoopi Goldberg in it so I'm almost sure they at least brought up the idea of a few musical numbers.

This movie will make you wish that they had made another parallel film called 9/10 (the day before) in which all of the people simply rode in the elevator and went home, sparing us this 90 minute steaming load. It's just about what you would expect in awfulness and starring Whoopi Goldberg and Charlie Sheen.

Many will claim that it is "Too Soon", too soon to have a movie about 9/11 with Whoopi Goldberg, but I beg to differ. Is there ever a right time to have a movie with Whoopi Goldberg? I mentioned that Whoopi Goldberg is in it, right? This was adapted from a community theater play. This film will make you want to run out of the cinema and race towards the nearest community theater in the hope of erasing this memory.

At the end there is a line that says the film is dedicated to the blah, blah, blah. You know the rest. Is there anything more completely devoid of meaning and worth than this sort of dedication? What exactly does that mean? The film is dedicated how, exactly? Financially? Doubtful. The only thing that may be even more useless is a moment of prayer.

There have been over 50 feature films made about the September 11th terrorist attacks on the U.S. – dramas and documentaries – about the attacks themselves and about their effects on the U.S. and on individuals. 2017 brings us the action drama "9/11" (R, 1:30),but that's not the first film to use that title. 2002's "9/11" is a television documentary from Bronx-born filmmaker James Hanlon and French documentarians Gédéon and Jules Naudet who were in New York filming a documentary about a rookie firefighter, but whose planned film was hijacked by real-life events, giving us rare footage from the epicenter of the attacks. In 2006, "World Trade Center" put Nicolas Cage and Michael Pena in that same spot, portraying real-life NYC Port Authority police officers trapped in the collapse of the Twin Towers.

Movies telling fictional stories of how the tragedy of September 11, 2001 affected ordinary people include "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close" (a 2011 Best Picture Oscar nominee starring Sandra Bullock, Tom Hanks, Max von Sydow and featuring child actor Thomas Horn) and "Reign Over Me" (a 2007 drama starring Adam Sandler and Don Cheadle). Then there are movies like "Zero Dark Thirty" (a 2012 Best Picture nominee with an all-star cast led by Oscar-nominated Jessica Chastain and directed by Oscar winner Kathryn Bigelow) which represent the wider effects of the attacks. For my money, the best 9/11 film to date is 2006's "United 93" (as opposed to the TV movie "Flight 93" – same subject, same year),which earned Oscar nominations for its editing and for the directing of "Bourne" series helmer Paul Greengrass. All of these films are good and some are great. So, how does this "9/11" stack up?

2017's "9/11", based on the award-winning play "Elevator" by Patrick James Carson, tells the fictional story of five strangers stuck between floors in the North Tower of the World Trade Center after American Airlines Flight 11 crashes into it. Jeffrey Cage (Charlie Sheen) is a billionaire businessman who is being divorced by his wife, Eve (Gina Gershon). Jeffrey and Eve have a young son together, but Eve's one big complaint against Jeffrey is that he doesn't pay enough attention to her or their son and she's had enough. Tina (Olga Fonda) has also had enough of her guy. She's dating a rich older man and she appreciates the perks that come with that relationship, but she hates being controlled by him and she's heading up to his office to tell him that she's leaving him. Michael (Wood Harris) is a Manhattan bicycle messenger who has a chip on his shoulder, but he also has a loving wife and young daughter who is having a birthday today. Last, but certainly not least, is Eddie (Luis Guzmán),a WTC maintenance man who is on that elevator as part of a work call. Fortunately, Eddie is friendly with Metzie (Oscar winner Whoopi Goldberg),who works the day shift in the elevator control room in the WTC's North Tower.

Like many others in the towers, the attack causes confusion and fear in the five people in that elevator, but their isolation just exacerbates those feelings. They realize that the explosion they heard, the elevator's sudden stop and their lack of cell phone service are probably connected and they begin talking about the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center and the airplane that flew into the Empire State Building in 1945, increasingly convinced that this is something like one of those incidents (or both). After repeated failed attempts to raise Metzie on the elevator's intercom, Eddie finally gets a hold of her and she reluctantly confirms their fears, based on news reports that she is watching from the basement of the North Tower. With a combination of information provided by Metzie, the limited resources they have at their disposal inside that elevator and their teamwork, those five trapped individuals try everything they can think of to free themselves, in between bonding and sharing personal details of their lives and trying to keep each other's growing fears from turning into panic. We also witness one desperate phone call that eventually successfully connects from inside the elevator and the valiant efforts by NYC fire fighters to save as many lives as possible even as the building starts coming apart.

"9/11" is a pretty good dramatization of the experience of being inside the World Trade Center on the morning of September 11, 2001, but is far from perfect. Most film critics (and many Movie Fans) have accused this movie of being cheesy, unrealistic, overly melodramatic and even offensive, but those criticisms are unduly harsh. The dialog in the script (by James Carson, Steven James Golebiowski and Martin Guigui, who also directs) is simplistic, Guigui's direction is too tame (and his film's budget too small),while the acting lacks depth… but to simply focus on those things is to miss the big picture. This movie approaches the experience of being in those towers that day from a fresh perspective and showcases the humanity of that day's victims and survivors, alongside the heroism of the WTC's workers and the New York area's first responders. People who are overly critical of how believably such people are portrayed weren't in the Twin Towers on that horrible day and those who think such portrayals are manipulative or unnecessary have kept themselves from appreciating this interesting and sympathetic motion picture. "B"