It may be taboo to say so, but respectful is boring. As the fifth anniversary of 9/11 comes upon us, pop culture has been immersed in dramatizations and tributes both restrained and reverent, from feature films like United 93 and World Trade Center to TV news specials and TV movies like A&E's Flight 93. All of them treat the events of 9/11 with the utmost solemnity and grace, and while they can often be moving, they're starting to get a little repetitive and even formulaic.
Which is why the ABC mini-series The Path to 9/11 is strangely refreshing in its approach. As the title implies, the mini-series is less about the events of September 11, 2001, than about the process leading up to them, starting in 1993 with the bombing of the World Trade Center. Based primarily on The 9/11 Commission Report, with additional material from a book by ABC News reporter Jon Miller, Path plays more like a political thriller than a weepy memorial, only dealing in its last half-hour or so with the familiar sights of towers being hit by airplanes, rescue personnel scrambling and passengers on the doomed United flight 93 rallying against their attackers.
A DVD Worth Your Time |
Gary Dretzka |
At that point, Path treads familiar ground and does so in a less compelling way than other representations have. But the bulk of the series is built around law-enforcement agents tasked with tracking down terrorists, primarily FBI agent John O'Neill (Harvey Keitel), an anti-terrorism expert who eventually became the head of security for the World Trade Center and died in the attacks, which were perpetrated by the very people he was pursuing. The rest of the cast is expansive, and includes government anti-terrorist expert (and notorious critic of his bosses' efforts to stop terrorism) Richard Clarke (Stephen Root), an anonymous CIA agent code-named "Kirk" (Donnie Wahlberg) and Miller himself (Barclay Hope).
There are dozens of characters both major and minor, and over five hours it's sometimes hard to keep track of them. Writer Cyrus Nowrasteh does his best to streamline the story and keep O'Neill at the center of it, and Keitel is perfect as the dogged agent who takes no guff from anyone in his pursuit of the bad guys. A number of veteran character actors, including Dan Lauria, William Sadler and Penny Johnson Jerald (whose Condoleezza Rice unfortunately recalls a little too strongly her Sherry Palmer from 24), do good work in smaller roles, and only well-known Republican Patricia Heaton comes off as crass in her one-scene, one-note part as the weak-willed, overly politically correct ambassador to Yemen.
At one point, Clarke opines that the terrorists have read too many Frederick Forsyth novels, but the best aspects of Path are the ones that resemble those very stories, or familiar ones by the likes of Tom Clancy. The sequences with agents preparing to take down terrorists, or Kirk tracking Osama bin Laden in the deserts of Afghanistan, are exciting in a completely nonpolitical way. Shot in an arty, handheld style by director David L. Cunningham, who is occasionally a little too enamored of his own inventiveness (extreme close-ups of random objects litter scenes for no apparent reason), Path resembles 2004's TNT miniseries The Grid in its mix of political realism and action-oriented excitement. At times you get so caught up in the moment that you start to think they might actually nab bin Laden this time around.
Politically, Path is critical of government inaction and red tape, and has as many harsh words for Clinton as for Bush (both of whom appear only in real-life news footage). Sometimes it's disturbingly authoritarian, as when law-enforcement officials long for the permission to torture suspects that cops have in other countries, but mostly its anger seems justified and rational. It's only when the familiar schmaltz and sentiment encroaches that it gets tiresome, and you remember that this isn't a typical fact-based, action-oriented TV mini-series, but yet another calcified memorial concerned more with honor and respect than it is with its often very effective drama and urgent message.