United 93 - Palm Beach Post movie review

'United 93': Familiar story retold in gripping fashion

By HAP ERSTEIN
Palm Beach Post

Among the many reasons we go to the movies is to replay our history, reflect upon it and use the experience in the healing process.

That communal need is seen most clearly in the intense, necessarily brutal, yet somehow muted United 93, a documentary-like re-creation of events inside the fourth airplane hijacked on Sept. 11, 2001, the plane that failed to reach its target — the U.S. Capitol — because of the actions of its doomed passengers.

Universal Studios

'United 93'

B+

The verdict: A harrowing, documentary-like re-creation of the hijacked 9/11 plane and its doomed, heroic passengers.

Director: Paul Greengrass
Starring: Opal Alladin, Erich Redman, Ben Sliney, Susan Blommaert, Peter Hermann
Run time: 111 minutes
Release date: April 28, 2006
Rating: R for some intense sequences of terror and violence.
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Hollywood on tragedy
Hollywood typically — but not always — has waited longer to depict major traumatic events than it has with "United 93."

Is it too soon?
Atlantans share their thoughts about 'United 93' on this AccessAtlanta blog.

On the web
Official movie site
View the trailer
Trailers require Quicktime

The story has been told countless times on newscasts and has already been turned into made-for-TV movies, yet that seems not to diminish the cumulative impact of this harrowing tale. In United 93, writer-director Paul Greengrass makes a point of dramatizing events in real time, which means that there is a great deal of time devoted, before the terrorists reveal themselves and take control of the aircraft, to the small talk and rituals of a seemingly ordinary day.

These early scenes are carefully composed and smoothly shot, a style that eventually gives way to the turmoil of increasingly chaotic hand-held camera, as the passengers storm the front of the cabin, thwart their captors and plummet to their death.

United 93 is anything but a passive viewing experience. It cuts away occasionally from the passenger cabin, but that is where much of the film is shot, placing us on the plane and forcing us to grapple with the unanswerable question — "What would you do in that situation?"

Of course, as scrupulously as Greengrass researched the subject, much of the film is conjecture. We cannot know how long the terrorists waited to take over the plane or how much they argued among themselves over their mission. Nor is the dynamic among the passengers who banded together against the hijackers known. But Greengrass has written a scenario that is undeniably gripping without taking any blatantly melodramatic leaps. He errs on the side of restraint, yet still delivers a powerful film that is difficult to sit and watch.

Four years ago, former documentary filmmaker Greengrass made a similar movie, Bloody Sunday, which re-created the 1972 massacre of 13 Irish civil rights demonstrators. He has a keen eye for the tiny details that convey authenticity and United 93 is expertly edited by a team of Clare Douglas, Christopher Rouse and Richard Pearson, who stitched those details into a narrative whole.

United 93 is a story that we all know, but one that is now told with visuals we could not have seen. Even though we are conscious that this is a re-creation of events, it would be hard not to be affected by the sight of air traffic controllers staring at downtown Manhattan, watching speechlessly as a second airplane flies directly into the World Trade Center.

Giving himself the further headache of using non-actors, Greengrass casts several key FAA officials and other government functionaries as themselves, a gamble that pays off in added realism.

But the emotional heart of the film is aboard the plane, where passengers call family members, often just to express their love for one final time.

Efforts have been made to answer concerns about the film by the families of United 93's victims and to dedicate a portion of the box office to a memorial fund. Still, charges of exploitation, unsuitability and inappropriate timing are understandable, and perhaps we each need to answer them for ourselves. But if and when you are ready for a film about United Airlines Flight 93, Greengrass has made one that puts you in the center of the action.