United 93 (2006)

[ZapRowsdower]

I remember seeing the teaser for this a few months ago and thinking to myself, "Hollywood has reached a new low." We already had someone exploiting 9/11 to push his agenda and make money (Michael Moore). We didn't need someone going Titanic on the event, because really, it's still too soon, and everything going on in the Middle East today, oil prices, economic slump, everything can be traced back to that day. We're still living it.

However, when a filmmaker cares more about telling the story than he does about making money from it, that would ease my nerves, and that was precisely the mentality behind this picture. Paul Greengrass cared about the people on that airplane, as I'm sure most Americans do. So instead of being exploitative, United 93 is actually an honest, accurate (though sometimes speculative) account on what happened that day.

I can't imagine this film with any actual names. Hollywood actors would lessen the impact this film had. So picking out people involved with the incident/people related to those involved in the incident and a bunch of unrecognizable faces was the right choice. It was a reminder that it wasn't Tom Cruise or Julia Roberts on these aircrafts, but people like you or myself.

The shaky-cam technique which was overdone and didn't quite work out in the Bourne Supremacy works very well in United 93. It helps bring a more documentary feel to it. Greengrass wanted to put us in the airplane with the passengers, and I feel he pulled it off.

A few months ago, when I saw the teaser trailer (back then, the movie was titled "Flight 93"), I thought I would hate the movie. I thought it would be boycotted and protested all over the country. But looking at it today, seeing that there's absolutely no political bias, no conspiracy theory, and just a mostly factual (the rest is just what probably happened) re-telling of what happened that day.

The ending leaves such an impact, you will walk out of the theater in silence. And something I really never saw coming, United 93 is the best film of the year thus far.

Story: 10/10
Acting: 10/10
Screenwriting: 20/20
Direction: 20/20

100%

[frankenjohn]

This review is based partially on fact and that I have seen in the movie. I guess there are spoilers if you don't know the story of the flight.





On the morning of September 11, 2001, a young man named Jeremy Glick boarded United Airlines Flight 93 from Newark Airport to San Fransisco, CA. In the film, he is depicted wearing a black cap and a green shirt with a blue vest over it. The actor who played him was a familiar face: I had seen him on commercials. What Jeremy Glick, nor the other 42 passengers on that flight didn't know was that 4 of those passengers were Arab terrorists. At midflight, the Arabs siezed control of the plane, threatening the passengers with knives and even a bomb. At that moment, 39 passengers became paralyzed with fear. They frantically made phone calls to their loved ones as the terrorists quickly escalated fears with random attacks, threats, and relentless Arabic yelling. But eventually, the passengers became knolwedgable about what catastrophic events were about to take place, which greatly worried the terrorists. They fiercely prayed to God to help them suceed. But God does not negotiate with terroists. No way, no how. And then, 3 passengers decided they'd had it. They decided to strike back. Those 3 passengers were Mark Bingham, Tom Burnett, and Jeremy Glick. Disobeying terrorist orders, they gathered with the stewardesses in the rear of the plane and constructed an attack against the terrorists. With the help of 40 other passengers, they successfully coordinated a charge at the terrorists. And you ask yourself who led the charge? Why, it was Jeremy Glick. First, he bashed the bomb-wielding terrorist against the wall. When he fell, Glick repeadiatley punched him. The terrorists, now frantic, met with resistance, by pushing a cart agains the crownd and spraying them with mace and a fire extinguisher. But good ol' Jeremy Glick charged this guy and wrestled him to the ground. This allowed the rest of the passengers to take the cockpit. And at 10:03 AM, United Airlines Flight 93 crashed in a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Over 43 brave Americans lost their lives defending their nations capital. And one of them was Jeremy Glick.

Jeremy Glick was a resident of my town. I take pride in knowing he was. He truly defines, in my eyes at least, what a hero really is. All of them are heroes, but I especially think Jeremy Glick was one. No one will ever know for sure what happened on that flight, but if it wasn't even close to what happened in this dramatization, I still think that Jeremy Glick was a hero, along with everyone else.

Oh, and by the way, this movie was beautiful. I didn't cry, but I cried out "You go Jeremy!" when he charged the cockpit. I felt like I was sitting on top of the world by then. It just goes to show what ordinary Americans can do when their nation is in dark times. For once, I feel proud to be an American.

See this movie at once.

[Pulpmariachi]

I said it in my review of "Brick", something is going to have to blow me further away to make me think of it as a better movie this year. And "United 93" isn't that.

In fact, I was rather disappointed.

The scenes on-board the actual plane are amazing and tense and define a lot of...stuff. You know, that Americans can unite for a short period of time. That, though we may all be different, we all love and care for other people.

Then everything else is pretty much "Armageddon". We're in the scenes where everyone is in the control room, babbling incoherently. I was bored. Everything made this to be a story about United Airlines flight 93, not everything else that was going on on September 11th. In fact, that's what I was really hoping for. But no. We're in that stupid control room and it's taking away from the film. Not to mention, it all felt like a prolonged scene from "Close Encounters of the Third Kind". "Do you want to report a UFO? Repeat: do you want to report a UFO?" As an audience, we know exactly what happened that day from an outsiders' point-of-view. I frankly wasn't interested in seeing what the military was doing.

I do like Paul Greengrass's work, but I think he shakes the cameraman by the shoulders when he's filming something. There are times when the shaky camera does work. Like the hijacking and the uprising. I would be willing to bet that those times were just a big mess of confusion, and I think the film delivers that greatly. But everything else is super-handheld. It gets annoying. I've seen other, better, handheld movies. Just look at "Saving Private Ryan" for one. When the characters are steady, the shots are nearly steady. The same goes for "The Constant Gardener" and any Robert Rodriguez flick pre-"Spy Kids". They know how to control it and it works better.

I disagree with Smitty in that it's overused here instead of during "The Bourne Supremecy". "Supremecy" was all about confusion and spy-tactics and everything, so it was effective. People know what's going on in this movie (after a certain point and strictly limited to those stupid control room scenes) but they don't know what to do about it.

Again, the United 93 scenes work so much, because Greengrass lets us get into the characters (or as much as they could base off the characters). The phoning home scenes are touching and show that people do care about others besides themselves. There were no messages of hatred or anything, even though what these terrorists were doing was pretty horrible. Those final moments (before the uprising) were about making peace, and that is demonstrated greatly. We saw it in "Munich" as the main characters suffer and we in turn are more connected to the action on screen. This is what happens during the plane sequences.

Personally, I think Greengrass should have abandoned the whole "real-time" aspect. This makes all the control room scenes seem like a dull episode of "24" while the cameraman has a seizure. He could have easily made a tight film cutting all that out, and emotionally I believe it would have impacted everyone even more.

iamthesmitty said:

We already had someone exploiting 9/11 to push his agenda and make money (Michael Moore).

Moore huh? Why don't you try the Bush administration? That documentary isn't false, it only presents one side of the truth, something Moore admists himself. But the Bush administration has exploited this event more than anyone could ever exploit something.

frankenjohn said:

They fiercely prayed to God to help them suceed. But God does not negotiate with terroists.

That is really an ignorant statement. Let's not forget the Crusades for one, shall we? Don't you know, God is gone. He's just watching this entire planetary affair like someone would mindlessly watch television. He's stopped interfering a long time ago. I don't think He's dead, but he's not doing anything any longer.

And everyone who has a done something drastic and violent to prove a point has used God as an excuse and as a means. The right-wing Conservative Christian society uses God to promote their hatred and bigotry and discrimination of everyone who isn't white, middle-class, and to an extent, a man. That is a form of terrorism right there too.

Everyone's missing the point of God. It's love. And God doesn't really side with anybody any more.

Anyways, back to "United 93", while it is a good film, it could have been delivered in such a better way. I repeat (because I'm a post-Modernists and we do like repitition), the airplane scenes are gripping and heartfelt and the best parts of the movie. Pity it wasn't limited to just that.

B

[Quorthon]

I don't think God is "love." God is a tool. God is used to control masses and invoke war and oppress freedom and remove rights. There is very little about God that represents love, unless of course, you're looking to the Christian God or Buddha. Indeed, the Christians and Jews have, through history, misused God. But they've calmed, they've cooled--they've matured and they use God for more positive ends now, sans the pockets of extremists like that group of "Baptists" going around protesting gays and our soldiers at our soldiers' funerals. The Muslim extremists, who are all we hear about anymore, still invoke God for, shall we say, "evil" means.

I do think Michael Moore used 9/11 for his own gain--the guy's so far to the left he's blind to anything else. The Bush administration has brought it up several times, but then, it seems like they're forced to now and then. People forget that we're in a prolonged war on terror, and they bitch about Bush as if all he's done while in office is attack Iraq--we've forgotten why we're in there. After Afghanistan, almost everyone just expected the fighting to be done. We need to be reminded of why we're in a prolonged war on terror. True, I think Bush jumped the gun on Iraq when there are somewhat more threatening hotspots, but Iraq does have a history of sponsoring terrorism. It's been said (on a show about 9/11 on the National Geographic channel--just last night no less) that, basically, American's have already forgotten. We're going to need another 9/11 to convince and remind everyone how important it is to go after these people.

I don't really want to get into a big argument here (and as Mod of this section, I'm supposed to be monitoring against such infractions), but as the Board's psuedo-Republican (I'm a right-leaning Centrist, as a reminder, though I know how I occasionally come off sounding), I feel the need to remind everyone that the Bush administration has nominated more blacks/minorities to Government positions than any previous administration. And, if we had to have a woman President, I think Condi Rice beats out Hillary Clinton (God forbid) any day. Frankly, I don't think the Republican party invokes God hardly at all for their means--the real threat there is the severe religious right. But who's going to listen to them, anyway? I mean, they believe in Creationism!! And Creationism/Intelligent Design is really about the only thing Bush supports that I think is truly retarded.

To the matter at hand, I'm only fairly interested in seeing United 93. I know my wife wants to see it (she's the full-blown Republican), but I'm iffy on the whole thing. But, I'll likely end up seeing it.

[Phoenix]

No politics here. Just why I wont be seeing this film.
Great reviews above by the way. But they still don't convince me to see the movie. For one, there was already a movie made about it - you can watch it for free on the USA network. My husband watched that one (I still, cannot) and said it was well done.

I refuse 100 percent to give this film ONE DIME of my money. I know everyone involved "cares" about it but it was greenlit for one reason: to make money off a tragedy that happened very recently. If you "cared" so much how about a documentary? Cause they don't make that much money that's why. I refuse to see a Hollywood bastardization. I would have paid money to see a honest documentary about the people on that flight, especially about Jeremy Glick, who you mentioned is from your hometown frankenjohn.

That's my two cents about that. I was in the military when these events happened, I took care of a lot of people that were affected after it happened, and I just think this movie (and the made-for-TV film they also made about it) is WRONG. I don't care how well acted, well directed, etc it is. In reality, I'm sure the makers are just delighted when people sob at the "realness" of their movie. It's sick.

I think a lot of people feel the way I do. The movie didn't open at #1 and only made $11 million. Sorry guys. I'm not going.

[Quorthon]

I tend to agree with Phoenix. I may end up seeing it just because the wife wants to, but I'm pretty much in the "too soon" category.

What branch of the military were you in, Phoenix?

My Dad's a retired Air Force Colonel.

[ZapRowsdower]

phoenix said:

No politics here. Just why I wont be seeing this film.
Great reviews above by the way. But they still don't convince me to see the movie. For one, there was already a movie made about it - you can watch it for free on the USA network. My husband watched that one (I still, cannot) and said it was well done.

I refuse 100 percent to give this film ONE DIME of my money. I know everyone involved "cares" about it but it was greenlit for one reason: to make money off a tragedy that happened very recently. If you "cared" so much how about a documentary? Cause they don't make that much money that's why. I refuse to see a Hollywood bastardization. I would have paid money to see a honest documentary about the people on that flight, especially about Jeremy Glick, who you mentioned is from your hometown frankenjohn.

That's my two cents about that. I was in the military when these events happened, I took care of a lot of people that were affected after it happened, and I just think this movie (and the made-for-TV film they also made about it) is WRONG. I don't care how well acted, well directed, etc it is. In reality, I'm sure the makers are just delighted when people sob at the "realness" of their movie. It's sick.

I think a lot of people feel the way I do. The movie didn't open at #1 and only made $11 million. Sorry guys. I'm not going.

That's your prerogative, but one of the reasons I loved the film so much was because of how unexploitative it was. I would have been very angry if they threw in some Pearl Harbor love story. That would have been major exploitation, and then I'd call it too soon. Everything in the movie that we aren't 100% sure actually happened are things that we think probably happened.

In times like these, some people need something to make them proud to be American (I already was proud, so I'm not one of these people). This is that something.

[Phoenix]

I'm already proud to be an American. I even served this country. I was in the Navy, I worked at Bethesda Naval Hospital as a nurse. Took care of a lot of people with PTSD after 911.

But I see your point Smitty, and I am glad the movie is well made at least. I still stand by my belief that this movie is too soon, that Hollywood made it to make money, and that I would much prefer to see a biography.

[Quorthon]

Has anyone seen any of the History Channel, National Geographic Channel, or Discovery Channel documentaries on the 9/11 attacks?

[Heineken Skywalker]

Finally saw it last night and thought it was pretty damn near brilliant.

Exploitative? Not in the least.

Well made and respectful? Absolutely.

[LivingDeadGirl]

quorthon said:

Has anyone seen any of the History Channel, National Geographic Channel, or Discovery Channel documentaries on the 9/11 attacks?

I remember watching a couple of them, I think one of them was on TDC.