Its well made, but it left me feeling empty

Rating: 5/10 (7 May 2006)

The story, as best as we can tell, of what happened on Flight 93 which crashed on September 11 2001 when the passengers attempted to fight back against the hijackers of the plane.
This is an extremely well made and well acted film. Its a film that pretty much puts you into the plane on 911. Its emotional and heart breaking. As a docudrama of what may have happened its a great film.
The problem for me was that I walked out of the film feeling extremely empty. Why have the film makers chosen to retell and re-speculate as to what exactly happened on the plane yet again? There have been the how many documentaries and at least one TV movie that covered the same ground. The film makers here have added nothing new except a big screen and big sound. The film essentially covers the moments before the flight and the flight itself and only puts the events in the confines of that narrow time period on that day, which for me added nothing new about anyone or anything. I stopped caring about twenty minutes in and simply braced myself for the body blows that were going to be coming.
I don't see the point of telling this story yet again. Actually the only reason for me is purely exploitive, its like those nasty made for TV movies about horrible tragedies that seem to be made just to make you watch and be upset. This isn't to say its a bad movie, its not, its just a completely unnecessary one since it doesn't add anything to what we know or have learned from the other versions of the story. What bothers me is that there have been so many re-tellings now that the effect or "shock and awe" is beginning to wear off. How many more will there be before we simply shrug and go "oh thats nice" dismissively?
I don't think I can really recommend this film to anyone other than those who don't know the story of what happened on 911. Granted that recommendation comes with a warning about the emotional pain this movie will probably cause you. If you've seen anything on this flight you may want to skip it, it will add nothing to what you already know, and it will only end up making you feel bad, something you can do on your own by thinking back to that fateful day.