THERE'S A MOMENT near the end of The Path To 9/11 - the dramatisation of the events up to and including 11th September 2001 - that will haunt me.It's one of those five second clips that will play itself back in my head for a long time to come, like the cereal raining down on the kid in Mysterious Skin, or the final shot of the sofa at the end of The Wire's first season.
In The Path To 9/11, we have a hero of sorts in FBI counter-terrorism expert John O'Neill, who we follow in his efforts to thwart the terrorists, from the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993, through to 11th September itself. O'Neill is the sort of doggedly determined American law-enforcer we know and love from US cop shows - think Tommy Lee Jones in The Fugitive. Shortly before 9/11, O'Neill retired from the FBI, frustrated by bureaucracy, and was appointed head of security at the World Trade Center. It's grimly ironic; O'Neill dies in the tower, of course. We witness him in a stairwell as one of the towers collapse, after helping in the evacuation. There's a moment of silence, and then doomf. Pause. Doomf. Pause. Doomf. O'Neill pauses and stares up at the ceiling as the noise gets closer and closer. We know from accounts by survivors that the noise is that of the building collapsing, floor by floor. We know what happens next.
