Blistering cinema

Rating: 9/10 (4 April 2019)

The events of that sunny Tuesday morning in September 2001 need no introduction. As the cliche goes, everybody remembers where they were on 9/11 and thanks to a million documentaries, YouTube videos and opinion pieces, we all have a detailed knowledge of what happened. Or rather, we all have a detailed OPINION of what happened and how events unfolded. While many accept the official account of the day, still more are moved to question the words of officials.
Conspiracy theorists will tell you that the US Government were behind it, the CIA did it, President Bush sanctioned it; all to sway public opinion into backing military action in Iraq and Afghanistan. There are literally hundreds of exposés online that point to 'evidence'; where are the remains of the plane that hit The Pentagon? Why didn't the military act sooner in getting planes airborne? What brought the twin towers down when they should have stayed standing? Some of the questions posed by the doubters are valid and worthy of real debate, others can be safely dismissed as groundless nonsense and tin foil hat worthy paranoia.
Where 'United 93' shines so brightly is that it doesn't ask any questions like this. It doesn't ask you to lean either way politically and it doesn't offer any opinions of its own as to the reasons for the atrocities. It focuses on the insurmountable truths of the day: that four planes, containing innocent people, didn't make it to their destination. What the viewer sees is an almost real time account of the doomed Flight 93, it's passengers and crew and those on the ground who attempted to make sense of the unprecedented events unfolding before their very eyes.
We see the very familiar scenes (if you've ever flown with an airline) of boarding, of finding your seat, of placing orders for food; the usual hubbub that is involved in any flight. The crew attend to the passengers while the pilots go through their pre-flight routine while elsewhere, air traffic controllers fulfil the almost superhuman role that they do everyday. It's all so normal and you feel like a fly on the wall, observing both the process of flying that you are so familiar with and all the behind the scenes activity that you are blissfully unaware of. If anyone stands out, it's four men of Arab appearance but they stand out because we already know who they are. That morning, they don't stand out at all because, acting calmly and normally as they are, there is no reason why they should.
And then, it all changes.
From the moment it becomes apparent that flight AA11 may have been hijacked, the film becomes something else entirely. All routine starts to evaporate as confusion creeps in; what happens here? Who is in charge? Who needs to know what's going on? Then, flight UA175 stops responding. What the hell is going on? At Air Traffic Control, organised chaos starts to take over. Many of those onscreen are actual ATC staff (who were there, in real life, on the day) playing themselves and this masterstroke piece of casting is key to how real the scenes feel. At no point do you feel like you're watching actors act. The dialogue is technical, ordinary and devoid of the flourishes of a scriptwriter. The restrained panic is keenly felt and is then intensified when it becomes apparent that all is not right with flights AA77 and UA93. "What is going on?", people ask in the same way we all did. Then, flight AA11 strikes the North Tower of The World Trade Centre and the film switches up again.
Okay, so I could dissect the whole film but it's best just to watch it. Director Paul Greengrass has produced a masterpiece of film-making here; I cannot remember the last time I was so tense whilst watching a movie. At times, it was unbearable despite the fact that you and I know what happened. Flight 93 was intended for the White House but it never got there because the passengers and crew fought back.
In this regard, Greengrass is using his imagination to depict what happened on that flight because, of course, nobody knows. We only have the mobile phone calls made by passengers to loved ones in their last moments to inform us that plans were being made to fight the hijackers. We don't have detailed accounts of what the passengers did but I didn't doubt even one thing that the film depicted. Ordinary men and women, sensing that they HAD to fight back to have any chance at all of survival? That's completely believable and the way the film had them go about it rang completely true. They did what you, I and anyone else would do when desperate times call for desperate measures.
For a film to convey such tension and drama when the audience already knows the outcome is a testament to the filmmakers. 9/11 outstripped anything Hollywood could have written but this film is very un-Hollywood. There are no rousing calls to arms, no overblown depictions of fantastical heroism, no cheesy soundbites. The music is used very sparingly but when it is, it is incredibly effective. We don't get to know the back stories of the passengers and crew. Referring again to the fly-on-the-wall feel, it is as if we are a fellow passenger (or ATC member of staff) and all we know of those around us is what we learn in the moment. Like so many who watched this film, I asked myself again and again what I would have done. Would I have got up there and fought? Would I have hidden away? Would I have suddenly felt the need to pray? I don't know. Who really does? You and I have never (and almost certainly will never) be in such a situation but United 93 gets us as close as is humanly possible to being right there.
At the end of the film, I exhaled out of sheer mental exhaustion at what I'd just seen. This film is extraordinary and not an easy watch but it's one I feel that you must see. You may well have done (seeing as it was released in 2006), in which case, watch it again. As a piece of cinema and for sheer emotional clout, it's the best film I've watched in a long time.
9.5/10