It made me cry so many times.

Rating: 9/10 (20 December 2007)

wow, this is a serious tear-jerking film. When I write comments, I usually don't like to admit that I cried while watching. I just watched the movie called "Joyeux Noel" last night, it made cry. This one made me cry several times. I cried so hard when one woman talked to someone on the phone that she loved them.
The story seems very authentic. They didn't waste any time on any unnecessary minor things. Even though this film is 111 minutes long, I don't think that it is long at all. At the last part, it only focused on what happened on that flight. Instead, they could have added a few more scenes from those control centers during or after the crash. I was afraid that this film might have too many brutal, violent scenes, such as blood flying everywhere, etc. It was not too bloody.
While watching, I wondered if they would show the US president. If they use an actor, it could certainly ruin the moment, because he is not the real one. It didn't happen.
One big problem for this film is its cinematography. That is the reason why I gave it to a 9 instead of a 10. Sometimes, it was obvious that the cameraperson was holding the camera by hand, so the scenes were shaking, or they focused on the subject too closely, or the camera was moving too fast as if someone was running from one place to another to give us the view. It made me feel dizzy. After all, this is a big screen film, not a home-made video. They want to give the audiences the feeling of being right there, they did not have to sacrifice the big screen images.
It would be nice if they list all the names and occupations of all the people aboard on that plane, maybe even those important real people's names when they first appeared. After all, this is not a fiction, it really happened. They can do that in the next release. I was surprised that Ben Sliney was the actual FAA Director of Operations. He did a really good job, very real.
I don't know anything about those four actors who portrayed the "terrorists" on the plane, hopefully they didn't get any threatens from anyone after this film. They were as real as they can be.
In the bonus feature, they only interviewed a few family members which are all Caucasian looking. I don't know if most of the family members had opportunities to meet with the person who acted as their beloved ones. Even though it was also touching, but it seemed to lack of diversity. It is a pity that neither of the pilot's family members were shown, one of the pilot was a black guy who just had a baby not so long ago. There were many other family members who were not included in it. Maybe those family members declined. Probably most of them have already been interviewed by various news medias which I just didn't have a chance to see them all.
One interesting note, this film won "Best British Film" by the Empire Awards, UK in 2007.