sad, uplifting, and necessary

Rating: 9/10 (4 June 2008)

'United 93' depicts the events of 9/11 from three perspectives: the passengers, the air traffic controllers, and the terrorists themselves. It is a muted film, low-key even while being almost unbearably tense at times. What it puts across most effectively is the confusion of the day, something I think most people tend to forget in retrospect. We now know of course what happened, when it happened, who did it, but on that awful day, facts were few and speculation was rampant. Everyone has a 9/11 story to tell, just as people of earlier generations could tell you where they were when JFK was shot, or when they heard about the Pearl Harbor attack. I do remember the confusion, being at work and listening to radio news reports... at one point, it was reported that a dozen planes were still in the air and it was strongly suspected that they had all been hijacked as well. This is the tack that 'United 93' takes, how slowly it seems before anyone in authority grasps what has happened and what continued to happen. There's no real sense of finger-pointing; everyone seems to have had a mental block against imagining that what took place was even possible. As one of the air traffic supervisors points out early on, it had been years since a single plane had been hijacked so even that was almost unthinkable, much less four planes being taken over at once to be used as weapons. It was quite clearly unfathomable to the politicians, the military, civilian authorities, and the general public. The passengers of 'United 93' are nameless faces, an assortment of 'types' it seems and their relative anonymity is intended by the filmmakers. They are people we see whenever we go to the airport or get on a plane, people we will only be aware of in passing and then never see again. And they are us. In keeping with the real-life, documentary feel of the film, the climactic scene doesn't feel like a climax, it feels like a group of people deciding on the spur of the moment to do something, anything rather than sit there helpless. They know from their cellphone conversations about the other planes hitting the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. They have reasoned that the hijackers are extremely unlikely to be carrying explosives or even real weapons. They know they outnumber the terrorists. One male passenger says he can probably fly the plane. So the decision is made to rush the cockpit, overpower their captors, and take control of the plane. It is a decision borne of necessity, and of elimination... it is the best option available to them. So there is a rush forward from the back of the cabin, a struggle with the two terrorists outside the cockpit which results in one being killed and the other knocked unconscious. The hijacker piloting the plane hears the passengers trying to break the door in and begins diving and swerving, trying to knock them off-balance. The final shots show the passengers breaking into the cockpit, as we see through the cockpit windows the ground rushing up. Then the screen goes black. At that point, in the theater where I was watching 'United 93,' you could have heard a pin drop.