United 93

September 13, 2006

Rated: R Runtime: 111 min Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

First let me start by saying that this review was written on the 5th anniversary of what can be considered the darkest day in the history of this country and therefore may be driven more by emotion than critical evaluation, but I’ll let you be the judge.

United 93 is a documentary style film that depicts the events of 9/11 through the eyes of the hero’s aboard United flight 93. I say it’s a documentary because Paul Greengrass uses information from that day to formulate the minute by minute account of what actually took place from the time the flight left New Jersey bound for San Francisco right up to point where it was brought down in Shanksville PA on it’s way to Washington DC.

This film is not a typical rah-rah go America action movie (Pearl Harbor) that uses a mixture of fact and fantasy to paint a picture of man vs unimaginable odds (SOAP) and ultimately the good guys win and all is right in the world; Nope in fact it is quite the opposite, this film does nothing more than show what a group of normal citizens in a no win situation decide to do when they realize their lives are forfeit, and their actions from this point forward will be to stop the plan of the evil monsters now in charge of the plane, regardless of the end result. All of the dialog is pulled directly from 9/11 Commission testimony, tapes of passengers’ phone calls, and the flight data recorders recovered from the crash, so you won’t see a guy stand up at the very last second and deliver some patriotic speech of self sacrifice before they go forward with their big plan to save the day, because that isn’t what happened.

33 passengers and 7 crew members made a decision together to bring this plane down no matter what it took, to make sure the 4 terrorists aboard did not reach their destination and complete their mission… And that is the only story Paul Greengrass tells, but he tells it well. I felt like I was sitting on the wing and watching every little detail unfold right up to the very end. So in closing this movie is neither fact nor fantasy since no one is alive to tell us what really happened but we know enough to know how it ended and that was enough for me.

This movie will be 90% emotion 10% visual and I cant really say I was entertained but I felt better for watching it so I guess it did what it was supposed to do. If you are the kind of person that would like to forget what happened on 9/11 then don’t watch this movie, but if you feel the need to honor those brave individuals then by all means pick up this DVD and share it with anyone who’ll watch. I apologize for not including any jokes or adding anything in our signature sidebars but I felt it was appropriate to just tell you how I feel and recommend this great movie and leave it at that.

Thanks for reading… JC