Suspenseful, Well-Acted, Jumpy Camera-work

Rating: 10/10 (29 April 2006)

Paul Greengrass has created a suspenseful, well-acted version of events regarding United 93 and the heroic passengers onboard. This is a great movie for these times, regardless of your political opinions. While some have complained that it is "too soon" for this movie. From a story-telling standpoint, the opposite is actually true. While the telling of this heroic story is very moving and suspenseful in 2006, I suspect that a channel surfer 30 years hence may find boring the long introduction of everyday scenes of passengers boarding and sitting in an airplane. Yet, for the current theater-goer, the familiarity with the story and the understandable obliviousness of the passengers and crew to their impending doom only adds to the suspense. The hand-held camera for the most part makes the viewer feel like a passenger in the aircraft and a fly on the wall in air traffic control rooms. However, I was distracted and annoyed by much of the sudden irrelevant zooming and jerking especially at the end of many shots. It was not as nausea-inducing as the previous Greengrass film, "The Bourne Supremacy", but a little less jumpy camera-work would have helped this movie. Because of the somewhat excessively jumpy camera-work, and the lack of timelessness to this otherwise great film, it gets 3 1/2 stars or an 8/10.