Powerful, moving, and all too real

Rating: 10/10 (30 April 2006)

The adjective "painful" is one that often gets bandied about in movie reviews, particularly when the film is a turkey. Paul Greengrass' United 93, which tells the story of the Sept. 11 flight which crashed into a farmer's field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, is the furthest thing from a turkey, and yet it's painful to watch.
Greengrass brings a cinema verite approach toward the subject, eschewing name actors in favor of unknowns  using a real flight crew and electing to have key individuals from the FAA play themselves. There are no individual heroes in this film, just ordinary folk. There's no Harrison Ford scaling through the underbelly of the plane looking to kick terrorist butt. Just average folks who, via cell and cabin phone links to loved ones on the ground, discover the fate of the three flights that preceded them and, concluding their fate, decided to act collectively to seize back the plane.
Played out in real time, it's a testimony to Greengrass' skilled film-making that the audience ends up finding welcome breaks from the mounting tension aboard United 93 when the director intersperses the events unfolding on the plane with scenes of carnage from the twin towers.
From the first frame, as we see the terrorists preparing themselves for their fate in their hotel room, to scenes of mundane, family-oriented preflight conversation from the flight crew, to the ubiquitous chatter of the passengers clearing security and stowing their luggage aboard the plane, a mounting sense of doom begins to grow as we watch everyone involved on their journey to certain death. And with it, mounting sadness over how the passengers almost pulled it off.
Some will argue that it's too soon for a film like this. The incident too fresh in people's minds. And they would be right, which is why United 93 is not a film for everyone. Each individual must make their own call as to whether or not they want to see this film. For me, the film was a cinematic parallel to John McCrae's famous poem written in the heat of battle during World War I:
"We are the Dead. Short days ago We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, Loved and were loved, and now we lie, In Flanders fields."
Whether you choose to see United 93 or not, the greater tragedy would be to pretend it never happened.