the day the world changed

Rating: 8/10 (2 February 2007)

There are milestones in history, days when the word changed, when tomorrow was a different world than yesterday. June 28, 1914 - start of WWI. September 3, 1939 - start of WWII. 9/11 - arguably start of WWIII.
The story of 9/11 only starts being reinvented by Hollywood. What is for sure is that it will look different than the 9/11 that we all lived through. This is why I appreciate even more a film like 'United 93' which does not try to present an embellished story, does not play on patriotic or even politic chords, uses actors whose faces are as anonymous as the faces you can see in a real airport, and catches not the spectacular but the human dimension of the event. The characters in the movie are people like us, who are caught in a moment of craziness of history. They all behave like human and not like superheroes, they fear, they pray, they cry for their loved ones. Even the terrorists are veridical, they have fear, the sweat an pray - just human on the wrong side of history.
Director Paul Greengrass' previous movie 'The Bourne Supremacy' was a imaginary thriller almost hard to watch because of the nervous cut in very short sequences, which intended to create a dynamics of its own in the minds of the viewers. What did not work well there works pretty good in the real-life thriller 'United 93', and combined with hand-held camera gives a feeling of authenticity to one of the best docu-drama that I have seen lately.