Gripping, frustrating, intense portrayal of heroism on 911

Rating: 8/10 (29 April 2006)

This is a gripping portrayal of what occurred aboard United Flight 93, the last plane to be hijacked on 911. The film runs pretty much in real time, splitting between the doomed passengers and the air traffic controllers who gradually become aware of, on the ground, what is happening in the air. The film plays as near-documentary, avoiding the temptation to idealize the people involved, or even elaborate much on who they were as individual personalities. Instead, it allows the horrific events to unfold as they apparently actually did at the time, without revisionist history or political commentary pointing us in a specific editorial direction. It makes no stars of its heroes, who are shown as just ordinary people who found themselves in a terrible situation.
This approach seems almost dispassionate at first. But through a careful, minute-by-minute reconstruction of the known events on board Flight 93 (and perhaps some reasonable, but limited speculation,) the tension and anxiety gradually builds to a harrowing conclusion. What we get is a flashback of sorts to the morning of Sept.11, when, at first, no one knew what was happening, or what would happen in the hours, months, and years to come. We experience the attacks only through the eyes of the people caught on board one plane and those watching from the ground, as the gravity of the day's events slowly becomes clear. The frustration of the controllers watching helplessly as they are unable to stop the numerous hijackings taking place across the country becomes our frustration as well.
Writer/Director Paul Greengrass takes great care in avoiding exploitation of the drama inherent in the terrible day's events, never letting us feel like we're watching an airport disaster movie. And although there is bloodletting aboard the plane as the terrorists carry out their evil plan, it never feels like the gratuitous, stylized violence of a gangster movie or mindless action flick. Rather, the brutal nature of all the 911 attacks manifests itself in the very personal hand-to-hand murders committed by the terrorists. The eventual heroic reaction by the passengers who turn from trapped victims with few options, into an improvised army desperately trying to save themselves and perhaps hundreds of other victims, needs no further justification: they realized what was going to happen to them, and they took action.
Initially, both the hijackers and the innocent passengers seem as ordinary as any group on an average flight would be. Their call to action is entirely believable because we see them go through the realization that the flight they're on is not a hijack, but a suicide mission. By refusing to over dramatize the now iconic moments like Todd Beamer's famous "Let's Roll" remark, Greengrass doesn't seem to be directing the film as much as simply allowing the story to unfold naturally before us as it did for the passengers. We're drawn into their story as their emotions become ours, thus making us feel as if we too are trapped on a plane heading for disaster. The only letdown of the film is the somewhat anonymous nature of the passengers. They're not identified as readily as we know them by now, or at least the main figures who posthumously found fame for their heroism; Beamer, Thomas Burnett, Mark Bingham and Jeremy Glick. This seems to be a conscious effort to make all those who were on the flight as important as any other, not just to lionize the already familiar names in the story, because no one but those who were there know exactly what happened, and what role they actually played.
The extraordinary actions of the ordinary people on board the flight are all the more chilling because we are forced to realize how easily it could have been any one of us stuck with the same fate on that day. But what will most deeply affect you after watching this film is the unavoidable question posed by its intense, involving, anxiety-inducing portrayal. Would you have the courage to do what the passengers did that day?