It was OK, but not GREAT by any means...

Rating: 5/10 (18 May 2006)

There has been a lot of controversy with regards to it being too soon to release a film about September the 11th. I personally thought that it was not too soon, and didn't see the problem in the film being released.
After reading all the controversy, I had to get my hands on a copy of this film! I succeeded in the task set and I just finished watching it.
I was NOT impressed at all. I imagined it would be more hard hitting than it was. To me a good film MOVES you, and I didn't find it very moving at all. This is a list of reasons why I wasn't enthralled with this film and why this film will not stick in my memory after today:
1)The characters were one-dimensional. None of the characters were explored in that much detail. Because of this you didn't get to KNOW any of them and thus could not FEEL for them.
2) I found the acting very blah. Not enough emotion was conveyed. I would imagine that if you were being hijacked you would have a look of terror on your face pretty much consistently, even when trying to hide it.
3) The layout of the film with the flashbacks at the beginning... I didn't think that worked very well.
4) What was with the air hostess announcing "Just a bit of turbulence" on the loudspeaker after half the plane already knew they were being hijacked... what kind of bull is that?
5) How comes everybody had the same identical black flip mobile phones? And why were all of them were able to use them in the middle of the sky. I personally have never been able to use a cell phone on a plane when it gets to a certain height. Everyone who wasn't on a cell phone used the satellite phones.The hijacker would glance over and give a mean look and the person would bend their head lower and the hijacker did nothing all... not a warning.... NOTHING!
6) The hijackers were like baby cats (you know that word that can refer to a cat or female genitalia). The one hijacker that they sent to overlook the whole plane whilst the others were in the cockpit, looked about 16, and really timid. I would imagine a real hijacker to be a bit more aggressive and threatening than that, and considering he was such a wimp I don't know what took so long for the other passengers to beat him up.
7) The "bombs" the hijackers had around their waists were as flat as pancakes. If they really did contain explosives, there would have barely been enough to blow up half a body.
8) The whole Lords prayer thing at the end before the guy gets ready to go and "rush" the Islamic fundamentalists, so as to conclude the film on a Islam VS Christianity flex, when people are feeling emotional about the whole thing I thought was lame.
The thing that I did find really realistic was the incompetence of the authorities. They had about 50 million phone calls and they still were acting like they didn't know what was up. How typical!
I felt somewhat sorry for the poor woman who tried to report the hijacking and got transferred to about 100 people and ended up getting hung up on in the end.
My favourite bit was were where one of the guys on the plane call his mother and his mother says to his father,
"Call the police." His father's response was,
"Can they fly?"
Well that's all I remember for now folks.