Impersonal, unemotional.

Rating: 2/10 (6 May 2006)

It's hard to say anything bad about a movie that deals with this topic, but it is equally hard for me to say anything good about it. So let's just see it as what it is, a movie.
The director emphasized on the fact that the people on the plane were normal people, no heroes. They were like me and you and the story is about those normal people acting like heroes. Usually movies have some kind of filter, so watching it really makes you aware that it is only a movie and not real. This one though could have been made with a usual digital camcorder that many people have at home. The idea was a good one, it reminded everybody again that all this really happened. Sitting in a movie theater though, only gave the impression of bad quality. They had great, unknown actors, but they didn't take advantage of them. The first part of the movie shows the procedures of getting onto a plane. Everybody knows that this is not very exciting. Then you see a lot of people sitting in a room controlling the planes etc. on their monitors. They are talking in their headsets, giving orders, telling others what they heard. Each shot throughout the movie is about 2 seconds long, maybe even shorter. Sometimes there is a conversation that lasts longer, then you see those people talking in a fast change of perspectives, from the front, back and the sides. Most of the times you only see a lot of different people every 2 seconds giving orders, in the background there is constant talking. Yes, it showed how unprepared the US was for such an attack and that those people were in a shock and everything was stressful. But after one hour I could hardly stand those voices anymore. Just imagine a hundred people constantly talking at you. That's how it felt. It doesn't only look like some inexperienced private person used his camera to shoot the movie because of the filter, but also because of the camera work. Let's just say it makes you dizzy after a while. Again, the intentions were good, but it doesn't work. As I mentioned before, they had good actors. The ones on the plane especially. The problem is, you hardly see them. After two hours you have no connection to them, you know almost nothing about them. They are still strangers, so thinking about it as only a movie, I didn't care about them. The last 20minutes of the movie were touching, but not because of the great movie. It was, because I knew that all this truly happened and it touched me on the day that it really happened. The movie just reminded me of the feelings that I had that day. All those media they used to make it look real, stressful and hectic also draw the attention away from the victims and their family and friends. It makes the story less emotional. I only felt like crying when I saw those people on the plane calling their relatives. Why not showing the relatives? Why not letting the viewers get to know those people in private? That's what it should have been about, getting to know the people that did something heroic. Instead, you see 1.5 hours of strangers getting onto a plane and strangers giving orders into their headsets.