Finale weakened by use of Cinema Verite style...

Rating: 7/10 (4 May 2006)

UNITED 93 would have been a much more powerful film if all of the airborne scenes aboard the doomed plane matched the clarity and intensity of the ground control scenes which are the most intense and best edited sections of the whole film. Instead, the director has opted for shaky hand-held camera movement and blurry fast-cut moments to obscure what happens when the passengers decide to revolt. This considerably weakens and defeats what otherwise would have been a brilliant film.
After all the build-up to that final moment when the passengers decide to do something about their fate in the hands of hi-jacking terrorists, there is a distinct letdown in the way these moments are portrayed, in "cinema verite" style with intentionally shaky camera movement, blurry action hiding the possibility of viewing anything clearly. It's as though the camera is on fast forward for the whole uprising event without anyone able to make out what is actually going on.
This, and the fact that we learn nothing whatsoever about any of the passengers--making them complete non-entities--is what ruins the film for me. Seeing them in a huddle whispering things like "Two planes went into the World Trade Center" is not sufficient dramatic device to make these events tangible to the average audience. Only those who were close to this event or had personal connection to it through relatives, will find this sufficiently chilling.
A big disappointment to me as a film. I don't think the Academy will be voting this into the winner's circle at Oscar time.
On the plus side, the music is dramatically appropriate and does add to the intense quality of many scenes. All of the control tower sequences are better staged and directed than the passenger moments when they decide "to roll". That is the film's weakest link. It ends with a whimper instead of a bang, defeated by the director's choice to use cinema verite style for the most explosive scenes.