LEWISTON – All that could be heard was the clicking of the movie projector and the weeping of the audience.

At the critical moment of “World Trade Center” – when the first tower collapsed atop its main characters, real-life based Port Authority officers Will Jimeno and John McLoughlin – the screen went black.

Florence Grenier was prepared.

The Lewiston woman sat in a front row of the Flagship Cinemas in Lewiston. On one side was her husband, Conrad. On the other were tissues.

When the black screen lightened to show the battered face of McLoughlin, played by actor Nicolas Cage, Florence Grenier watched and held on to her emotions.

“I almost cried,” she said. But she didn’t. Neither did Conrad, who confided that he, too, choked up a bit.

“I think people should see this film,” he said. “I think it would do a lot of good. It’s about heroes.”

The Greniers dismissed the worry that it’s too soon for Hollywood to begin telling stories of 9/11, the basic events of which are widely known.

“It’s real life, and it really happened,” Florence said. “It’ll be five years next month.”

It’s a tough movie, though.

“World Trade Center” begins quietly the morning of the tragedy. The two officers get up before dawn and drive into the city from New Jersey.

Then, the first plane hits. The officers are already headed downtown when they hear the first reports that there was a second plane.

Then the towers fall and the officers are buried.

Most of the film takes place in the following minutes and hours.

Director Oliver Stone, known for his politics and camera mastery in such films as “JFK,” “Born on the Fourth of July” and “Nixon,” went back to the style he used in “Platoon.”

Here, his movie is simple and gut-wrenching.

Moments such as the tower collapse, which might have been accompanied by mammoth special effects and a swooning soundtrack, are underplayed. Instead, he follows the officers, their families and the rescuers.

With the two officers, Stone descends into a kind of hell. They watch friends die beneath the rubble, try coping with their own pain and fight to keep each other alive.

Meanwhile, their families worry.

To Ken and Tina Blauvelt, that was the most heartbreaking part.

“When you watch CNN, you don’t see this personal kind of story,” said Ken Blauvelt, who went to the opening day matinee with his wife, Tina.

In one particularly moving scene, the pregnant wife of an officer panics when she realizes she cannot be reached by phone. She leaves her family in the street to walk home.

The moment, like so many in the 125-minute film, feels real and honest.

It was not enough for everyone.

Linwood Hansen and Sheri Lagrange drove down from Hartford to see the film. They were disappointed.

“I wanted to know why (the towers) got hit and who did it,” said Hansen. Justin Libby of Lewiston, who went with Hansen and Lagrange, said he wanted more action.

The Blauvelts disagreed.

They learned nothing about the events that day, nor did they expect to.

The couple saw April’s “United 93,” which told the story of 9/11’s fourth plane, in which the passengers died as they seized control from terrorists.

“It made you see how the people dealt with what happened,” Tina Blauvelt said.

So did this movie.