Good movie...but

Rating: 5/10 (17 November 2006)

OK, yes this movie is good and does capture the agonizing horror of what happened. But...there are some problems with this film that really hurt the overall effect in my opinion.
First of all is the terrible, amateurish camera work. I had a really serious headache after watching the shaking, unsteady camera in this movie. Not since "The Blair Witch Project" has anything been so poorly filmed.
And then there is the endless talk, talk, talk in the control rooms that appeared to be amateurs trying to act. This may have indeed showed how confusing the whole situation was but it was not good film making. If this movie had been filmed with a steady camera (and maybe not just one) the effect would have been much more dramatic and devastating. This is not to say that this was not powerful; many moments actually where horrific and brutally presented how terrible this tragedy was.
The movie does a great job of showing how inept the government was, and the military to allow anything like this to happen and it does make a person wonder...just what was going on??? What was going on? One can get the feeling from the way this is presented that maybe the government did know what was going on and even let this happen? I am not the only one of several people who viewed this with me that got the same feeling.
There is no doubt at all that those passengers were true heroes if there ever were any, and I am not trying to minimize that at all by criticizing this film. The absolute fact is the way this was filmed was very hard on the eyes. I felt like I was in a rowboat on a storm tossed sea with all the jerky, unstable camera work, and that along with the endless control room chatter made this a not so good experience for me, because I felt like I was watching a news show and not a movie at all. Powerful, but could have benefited so much more with some good camera work, better acting (for some), and some major stars thrown in.