Disappointing

Rating: 4/10 (28 April 2006)

I cannot even begin to explain how disappointed I was with this film. I know people are reading this and are wondering how I can be so negative toward a film so controversial without sacrificing nationalism.
If anyone has seen the TV special about United 93 (I believe it was on A&E), they will know what I am talking about. In the A&E version, it made the audience feel like America won. I know people are going to reply with, "So and So amount of people died...It was a tragedy...America did NOT win...blah blah blah." Obviously the events of 9/11 were tragic, but the reason that Flight 93 has become so popularized is because of the heroic nature that a small group of citizens were able to display amidst a day of bloody chaos.
In the A&E special, the audience was immediately introduced to the passengers after 10 minutes of the movie. The director captured the emotions of both the passengers and their loved ones back home with great effectiveness. The struggle at the end of the movie was so emotional and even though the plane was shown crashing, you were overcome with great sorrow...but also with a feeling where you were proud to be an American...you were proud and ever so inspired to know that we as Americans are capable of a great number of things. We live in a nation where headlines publish stories of death rather than life. Papers and television cover car accidents and double homicides, but we never hear about the fireman that saved a family from a burning building. We don't hear about the high school service groups that spend their time after school working to raise money for less-fortunate, but we do hear about the high school students that were busted for drugs after the bell. There is no time or space in America for uplifting stories about true, real-world heroes. Those people on Flight-93 were heroes, and they deserved to be portrayed as such.
I was attending this movie with the intent of creating an emotional bond with the passengers and their families. I wanted to cry when the decision was made to attempt to take over the plane while dozens of passengers phoned their final goodbyes...but I couldn't. The movie spent 5-10 minutes at most with the passengers throughout the entire movie. No one with connections to immediate family that were affected by that crash could possibly have felt anything from this movie.
I am tired of the posts on the message board as well - "two things that prove that Bush knew about 9/11." F*CK if Bush knew. This movie is not about George F*cking Bush. This topic is not about George Bush. 9/11 is not about George Bush. 9/11 is not about the United States Gov't. 9/11 IS about the NYPD. 9/11 is about the thousands of volunteer workers, like firemen, doctors, and caring citizens that spent days and weeks and months of their lives saving others. Let's praise and salute those people, not brush them under the bed with Bush talks.