Oliver Stone's World Trade Center

-->

(Updated 2 times below)

The cover story in Newsweek today is about Oliver Stone's movie, World Trade Center. I've always felt that Stone is one of the greatest living movie directors. Say what you will about his politics, but the man is a master filmmaker. So I have no doubt that WTC will be a master work -- and early reviews confirm that.

And/But it is being released on August 9, right during the run up to the November elections. Will the movie (which has no political axe to grind) escape being politicized?

"A lot of the conversation about 9/11 in the five years since it's happened has been motivated by a political agenda. From all sides," says [co-star] Maggie Gyllenhaal. "What that's done is make everyone really wary of talking about it and thinking about it. Which is why I think World Trade Center is so special. Somehow, in the midst of all this, Oliver has made a movie that doesn't seem to have an agenda, either political or personal. It really is about honoring people."

Do you think it will or will not escape being co-opted by one side or the other?

UPDATE: Richard Schickel, Time Magazine:

There are reports that the political right, to whom Stone has long been an anathema, is trying to lay claim to the movie. But that is nonsense. What liberal would want to deny the compassion and courage of working- class heroes whom the left embraced, historically, long before the right? Very simply, World Trade Center is a powerful movie experience, a hymn in plainsong that glorifies that which is best in the American spirit.

UPDATE II: The flame wars have begun.