Nobody does steel-eyed, furrowed-browed introspection quite like America...and September 11 allowed them to create their own heroes and demonise their own villains like never before.

Director Oliver Stone appears to have switched political wings from left to right to flag wave his way through the terrible events of that day using the eyes of a couple of regular-guy New York cops.

Veteran sergeant John McLaughlin (Cage), a taciturn family man, and officer Will Jimeno (Pena), a young newly-wed, find themselves pinned down by rubble in an air gap following the collapse of the towers.

At home their wives - Maria Bello and Maggie Gyllenhaal - anxiously watch the television and wait by the phones...but not only does nobody know they are there but no-one believes anyone could have survived.

Stone rigorously employs standard storytelling techniques to recount the sequence of events. So we are constantly cutting between Cage and Pena, their increasingly desperate spouses and the oblivious rescue teams above them.

It's a perfectly valid approach but over-familiarity with the style risks rendering the characters bland stereotypes while the decision to use name actors means their celebrity detracts from the real flesh and blood heroes.

The introduction of "Captain America" - a God-fearing, lantern-jawed ex-marine who dons his fatigues and strides into Ground Zero to locate the men (and then does two tours of Iraq) smacks of the sort of turning-defeat-into-victory nonsense Michael Bay shamelessly mined in Pearl Harbor.

British director Paul Greengrass showed you don't need to do this. His sublimely crafted United 93 dealt with the same terrorist outrage...but a cast of unknowns ensured you left the cinema impotently raging at the killers while hailing the heroics of the doomed passengers.

Sure, there are some scenes that sear themselves onto your mind - the jokey cops stunned into a grotesque silence as they realise the attacks are for real and the brief shadow of an airliner darkening a building en route to the towers.

However - outside American cinemas - it never really comes over as anything more than a slick disaster movie.

Tim Evans