Amazon.co.uk Review
One of the most shocking events in modern American history gets a skilled and respectful treatment in
United 93. The movie begins by following the four terrorists who hijacked the plane that never reached its target on 9/11/2001, tracking them as they enter the airport and wait for their flight, surrounded by the people who will die from their actions. From there, it cuts to and fro among air traffic controllers and the military as, gradually, it becomes clear that planes are being hijacked and crashed into buildings. As the focus turns to the captive United Flight 93, the passengers discover, due to cell phone connections with family, that they're on a suicide mission and--almost paralyzed by stress and anxiety--decide to fight back. Most movies create tension by implying what might happen, but with
United 93 the audience knows exactly what happened: Every person on that plane died. As a result, the movie is more relentlessly gut-wrenching than suspenseful (though the dawning realisation of the air traffic controllers has an effective creeping dread). But writer/director Paul Greengrass (
The Bourne Supremacy) manages to keep the scale of the events human; there are no glamourous heroics, only terrifying confusion and desperate, hopeless bravery. One can only hope the movie brings some peace to the families of the passengers, as
United 93 is the cinematic equivalent of a war memorial, commemorating lives lost in a moment of horrible, harrowing conflict. --
Bret Fetzer
Synopsis
United 93, director Paul Greengrass's meticulous reconstruction of the events surrounding the crash--the result of a heroic struggle between the passengers and hijackers--of the fourth plane to be hijacked on September 11, 2001, is a momentous piece of filmmaking. Greengrass has chosen the most politically and emotionally charged source material available to an artist in the early 21st century, and shaped it into a psychologically draining, terrifyingly real, and technically brilliant film. Like his first feature-length work
Bloody Sunday, United 93 doesn't follow a traditional cinematic narrative structure; via hand-held cameras, grainy DV stock, and frenetic editing, it instead presents a visceral (at times sickening) in-the-moment documentary-style experience that maximizes the film's unavoidable air of tension and dread without being crassly manipulative. Yet for all of its precision and craft,
United 93 still depicts one of the most terrifying ordeals the United States has ever had to face--and that it was released less than five years after those events took place plays an undeniably enormous role in how the film is received. It is impossible to watch
United 93 and not be profoundly moved, whether that emotion is fear, sadness, anxiety, or pure rage. It is an emotional catharsis far removed from what is the filmmaker's delicate hand and deft touch. Greengrass, though, is quite fearless in his depiction of the chaos of the day--the President is frustratingly missing; the FAC, NORAD, and local air-traffic control centres are shown in a disoriented panic; and the terrorists are brutal and remorseless--and, to his credit, he avoids soft-pedalling any political agenda and doesn't blindly canonize the flight's passengers. Rather, their heroism is treated as the product of a logical decision made by ordinary men and women who found themselves in the most extraordinary and illogical of situations and that, ultimately, is where the power of
United 93 lies.
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