Has Oliver Stone turned over a new leaf? Or even two new leaves, perhaps — political and cinematic?

At first glance, his latest movie, "World Trade Center," which opens today, looks like something way out of the ordinary for the controversial filmmaker, whose movies ("Salvador," "JFK") often lean markedly left in their criticism of the government.

Stone has wrapped this true story about rescuers trapped in the Sept. 11 wreckage into a red, white and blue tribute to the American spirit. His film focuses on two men stuck in a dark, claustrophobic elevator pit — this from a director whose last film was the epic "Alexander."

Before you start to trumpet the arrival of the new Oliver Stone, he has something to say: Forget it.

The way he sees things, the drama is vintage Stone: a detailed account of what he considers to be one of the most important events in the country's history.

"I want people to remember that day as it was," he said in Chicago recently at a press briefing that also included producers and cast members. "I had a feeling that we should memorialize some of this. This was a story that was begging to be told."

But is it too soon to tell it? As with the previously released "United 93," some people oppose the very notion of a movie based on the terrorist attacks.

"It's certainly not what I would consider 'entertainment,' " star Nicolas Cage conceded. "But it's a relevant film. He (Stone) didn't have an agenda to politicize or twist the story. But he did stress that he had an obligation to the firemen and policemen (who were involved) to get it right."

Contrary to what everyone might think, Stone said, this is not a movie about the actual terrorist attacks.

"It's a story about the men and women who fought back," he said. "As such, it's a dramatization of the attitude 'You can knock us down, but you can't keep us down' that has arisen over and again in this country, from the raid on Pearl Harbor to the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina."

Stone said he had little control over the movie's timing and said it's "coincidental" that its release will come on the cusp of the attack's fifth anniversary. The plot is based on two policemen, John McLoughlin (played by Cage) and Will Jimeno (Michael Pena), who rushed into the World Trade Center and ended up trapped under the mountain of debris when the buildings collapsed.

"It took two years for them to recover enough that they were willing to share their story," Stone said. "It took another year after that to get the project together. Then there's the process of making the movie. It just took that much time."

The film doesn't sensationalize the attacks. Audiences won't see the planes hit the buildings, and they subsequently collapse only on TVs in the background of a couple scenes.

Producer Michael Shamberg said that maintaining the trapped rescuers' limited and often-confused perspective was a crucial aspect of the project.

"They didn't know what was going on outside," he said. "One of the most telling moments for me is when John finally is lifted out of the hole and says, 'Where are the buildings?' "

That line, like much of the dialogue, is as accurate a quote as it was possible to get under the circumstances. In an obsessive quest for accuracy, Stone not only interviewed many of the rescue workers who were there that day, but he hired them to play themselves as extras.

He also turned an attentive eye to the two main sets: the debris field left after the buildings collapsed and the elevator shaft where the men were trapped.

"His attention to detail was amazing," Cage said.

Too amazing, perhaps, for McLoughlin, who said that the re-creations gave him the shivers when he visited the set.

"The debris field was kind of creepy," he said. "It was upsetting to look at. So I chose not to go look at the hole I was trapped in."

Stone understands that some people's nerves still might be too jangled for the movie.

"As a country, our collective psyche that day was that we were at war," he said. "For some people, this is going to be like taking the entire country back to the psychiatrist's couch to talk about what happened."