Terrible first hour saved by extremely emotional and gut-wrenching final third

Rating: Null/10 (18 June 2010)

Four young Arabians prepared themselves physical and spiritually in order to hijack flight United 93, the night before the fatal 11-S-2001. Same day, other three planes were hijacked as well and reached their targets: The World Trade Center and The Pentagon. British director Paul Greengrass gives a close version about what could possible happened inside the plane, basing upon the last recordings from the pilot cabin and the telephone calls made by the passengers to their beloveds. The movie shows how the passengers tried to subdue the terrorists, one of them with a bomb tied to his waist, once they had killed both pilots and one of the passengers. Meanwhile, we see the prevailing crisis in the Air Traffic Control, trying to deal with a situation which leads to close all the country's aerial space. Despite the courage of the passengers, the United Airlines' plane, with an original route to San Francisco, crashed near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, without reaching its target, located in Washington D.C.
Watched The Green Zone yesterday, also by Paul Greengrass and decided to check some of his earlier work. United 93 seemed like a good choice even thought I knew it would be hard to watch. I have to say that the first half of the film, which shows the FAA and the military finding out slowly that several planes have been hijacked is extremely dull. I realize they're portraying what happened as best as possible but seeing these two groups (which were completely unprepared) dealing with the situation, looking at radars, using jargon and so forth, does not make for good cinema. It was absolutely excruciating and I nearly gave up on watching United 93.
Having said that, the final third of the film which shows a group of passengers rallying up and together conjuring a plan to take over the plane from the hijackers was incredibly well done and extremely emotional. I found myself thinking "Come on, kill that Mother*****!" as the passengers started to fight the hijackers, such was the emotion of what was being portrayed on the screen. It truly was gut-wrenching. Unfortunately, everyone knows the outcome of this story, the plane crashed, no one survived. Still, what these group of passengers tried to do is nothing short of amazing, and for that sole reason they deserve their story to be told. I wish that instead of what we saw in the first half, Greengrass had shown us perhaps the background of some of this characters, or the simple mundane events in their lives prior to the flight as it would have made for a much better film.
6.5/10