I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

This is brilliant, it shows the emotions in NYC at the time, it shows first hand experience(for the most part) and it shows how firefighters worked on the scene. There is no other words to put it as, but outstanding!

9/11 (2002) **** (out of 4) Powerful documentary about a fire crew that was at the World Trade Centers just as all hell broke loose. I guess this here is the most popular documentary of that day but I just now got around to it. As usual, everything we see going on down there is still shocking and it still seems like it was just a bad dream. The noise of the bodies hitting the ground is a sound you won't get out of your head.There have been countless documentaries done on 9/11 and I find all of them incredibly hard to watch and this one here is no different.

Incredible documentary captured all the frenzied chaos and misery which loomed over NYC on that fateful morning of September 11th. Intense, personal, and completely riveting, 9/11 is perhaps the greatest documentary ever made by accident, which kind of gives it an even greater appeal. Up until that morning, filmmakers Gideon and Jules Naudet had been following around a New York firefighter team, concentrating specifically on one new recruit in a little piece they were shooting dealing with the rigorous training to become a fireman. Out with the team that morning filming yet another simple routine cleanup, Jules lifts his camera up to the sky just in time to record one of the only known images of the first plane hitting the World Trade Center, and from there a simple documentary was no more.Viewers are given a first hand account of what it was like to be in and around ground zero, as the amazing group of fire-fighters and one profoundly bewildered cameraman attempt to navigate this disaster. Without hesitation, Naudet follows these automatically programmed heroes into the tower while it's entire support crumbles around them. The raw fear of an unknown, impending doom lurks with more viability then any fictional production could ever fathom as we watch less and less become audible and visible for those trapped inside. Nearly as memorable is older brother Gideon's candid capturing of an entire city in the throngs of a larger and more palpable fear then anything they had collectively witnessed. By the time we get to see the second tower collapse, as the cameraman shields himself from apocalyptic debris, we should all but be rinsing the dirt off ourselves from the amazingly up-close footage captured.Obviously the filmmakers deserve only as much credit as being in the right place at the right time to document such an extraordinary event, though one can only admire the two brothers in their extraordinary adaptation to such an event; in a few desperate minutes we witness them become like the firemen they document- only instead of saving lives they knew they had to save footage, even if it cost them their own safety.After viewing 9/11, and seeing that it came out in 2002, I feel much more resentment towards Oliver Stone's recent rendition, the big budgeted World Trade Center. Many had criticized the film for ignorantly narrowing down the focus to those two survivors trapped in rubble, and although I enjoyed the movie just fine for the small and sentimental Hollywood focus it brought, 9/11 all but renders his film completely obsolete. Not only will this utterly gripping footage remain the only definitive collection from that day, but the sublime transfer of motives midway ensures that this documentary has all the heart and character needed to never sensationalize the event again.

Let me get the bad out of the way first, James Hanlon is absolutely terrible trying to act his descriptions of what was going on with the rookie training and events of the day. Really it is in stark contract to the other fire fighters without acting aspirations who are natural in their delivery.That said it is an amazing film that is impossible to watch without tears in my eyes. I am an English guy from London but I love New York and have visited many many times before and after September 11th. It is a second home to me and I can't help but feel devastated at the loss of life but also the destruction of part of such an amazing beautiful city. This is the real deal, in with the fire fighters with everything collapsing around them. I am so glad the footage exists to show people how it was on the day. It is a shame that they didn't use any footage of people jumping from the buildings because friends who were there tell me this is such a major part of their memory, it should be included to show future generations just how terrible it really was.Conspiracy theorists can go to hell by the way.