A different kind of movie

Rating: 9/10 (21 April 2012)

"United 93" is the largely factual story of the September 11th attacks as seen by air traffic controllers and especially by the passengers and crew of United flight 93, which crashed over Pennsylvania after being hijacked. The movie is free of the trappings of most mainstream movies, especially disaster movies, almost entirely lacking a soundtrack or any attempts to jazz up the story with memorable, contrived characters and snappy dialogue.
This is about as realistic as a movie is likely to get, and you're not going to see too many movies like it. It's not a fun movie to watch - everybody knows the bad guys "win", and it's rather crushing to see all of this in disaster movie format. In any other disaster movie, the capable grace-under-fire guys on the ground would be on top of everything and get those fighter jets in the air, and the everyday people on the plane would become heroes and kick some terrorist ass when it counted most.
Instead, this is painfully realistic, and you watch as the sympathetic characters are totally powerless and ineffective... and you pretty much see why. It was hard to figure out what was going on in the few minutes people had to work with. When it became clear what was happening, it's pretty impossible to climb up a commercial airliner and right it after the suicidal terrorist pilot has sent it into a nosedive.
It's depressing stuff to watch but that's kind of the point. This stuff, more or less, really happened. Even those of us who were adults when it happened find it easy to forget the drama and horror of that day. This is the kind of movie everyone should see.