A powerful and respectful film about tragedy and heroism

Rating: 10/10 (4 February 2007)

United 93 has no major stars, and not really any truly amazing performances. It just has everyone doing what they're supposed to adding up to a piece of work that's unquestionably one of the most emotionally gripping in modern cinematic history.
The film basically follows a three viewpoints through the tragedies of September the 11th: the air-traffic controllers, the military, and foremost the passengers of United Flight 93. In my opinion the film should win the Academy Award for best Film Editing for moving back and fourth so fluidly between one viewpoint to another, showing how and when certain people learn what's going on, and how and when they make the choices they do. There's not a wasted second of screen time. There is not a lot of character development, and there's absolutely no back stories, and the movie is better off for it. It's about people caught in a tragic situation, about people doing their job, and about people stepping up even when there's a great chance of no great outcome. There are no Hollywood heroes, and even in the case of the terrorists there are no villains, just people being people. We know what's going to happen, and that makes watching the film often nerve-raking, but everything is done with respect and honesty in what happened that day.
Director Paul Greengrass deserves a lot of credit for putting together this masterpiece, but ultimately it's the accuracy that holds it together. I'm sure almost endless research was done to keep this film as true as possible. Sure it's not exactly how it happened, which would have been impossible, but it feels like it's exactly how it happened. Not one moment feels phony and the intense sequences don't make you say wow they did that great, they just leave you silent because you're practically experiencing the tragedy from a perspective few other have ever. This film did fair but not great at the box office understandably because many think this is a little too soon. Whether it's too soon to see something like this is up to each individual. For me it wasn't. I would encourage anyone on the fence to see this because it's a movie to experience; just unlike anything in modern film.