I talked to McLoughlin by phone after watching the pre-release screening a few days ago. He has seen the movie twice and assured me that it accurately captures what he and Jimeno experienced during the 22 hours McLoughlin was buried before being rescued. (Jimeno got out eight hours earlier.) The hardest part, he said, was seeing what his family went through while he was missing.
McLoughlin and Jimeno were among five who went into the WTC to rescue survivors when the South Tower began collapsing on top of them. They survived by the tenacity of human hope and the immense bravery of rescuers who entered that hellish burial ground at great personal peril.
What is not shown in the movie, but McLoughlin told me, is that the two had been discovered early in their nightmare by a man who left and never returned. Many hours later, two others found them. When Jimeno begged them not leave, one of them -- Marine Staff Sgt. David W. Karnes -- responded: ``We're not leaving you. You are our mission.''
They don't make goose bumps like that anymore.
Karnes, played by Michael Shannon, was an inactive Marine at the time, working as an accountant. When he heard about the attacks, he pulled on his fatigues, got a haircut, said a prayer and went to Ground Zero. He subsequently re-enlisted and served two tours in Iraq.
McLoughlin didn't know for two months after his rescue that the towers had fallen. Barely alive when he was extracted, he was put into a medically induced coma for six weeks to allow for 30 surgeries.
Asked if he thought the movie was made too soon, McLoughlin said it needed to be produced while memories were fresh. ``It's not so much what we see today, but what generations from now will see.''
``World Trade Center," nevertheless, is a must-see today -- not so much to witness the evil that men do, but to be reminded of the good of which they are capable.