Now Playing: United 93

Do Not Go Gentle...

11 September 2001

For those of us too young to remember the attacks on Pearl Harbor, this is the day that will live in infamy for us.

In the ensuing weeks and months, there wil be a number of films released depicting the events of that fateful Tuesday morning in September. However, it's hard to imagine that there will be any as sober and affecting as United 93.

British documentarian Paul Greengrass has constructed a chilling re-creation of the events of that morning by focusing on the one of four flights that did not reach its target.

Greengrass and his collaborators interviewed over 100 friends and family of the crew and passengers of United Airlines flight 93. The result is an absorbing theory of what happened on that morning.

The movie opens with a rare, for this film, moment of melodrama. A man, presumably in a Manhattan hotel room, is praying in Arabic. His companions soon tell him, "it's time."

We quickly move to Newark International Airport where we view routine happenings. Pilots and flight attendants arrive for the flight. Passengers, including the soon-to-be hijackers, are passing through airport security. The plane is being loaded with luggage, food and, ominously, fuel.

We're taken to various other locations: Air Traffic Control in Boston and the FAA's command center located in Herndon VA. In Herndon, we're introduced to Ben Sliney. It's his first day on the job as National Operations Manager for the FAA. At this point, the day is normal.

Sliney meets with his staff as the plane is loaded and taxied onto the tarmac. Because we, the audience, know what is about to happen, there is palpable tension in the unfolding of routine events: the stowing of carry-on luggage, the taking of breakfast orders, a pre-flight checklist.

While United flight 93 waits on the ground for over 30 minutes for takeoff clearance, American Airlines flight 11 and United Airlines flight 175 have taken off from Boston and are in the air. Greengrass takes us to Air Traffic Control in Boston where a controller notes a problem with American 11. It is off-course and he can't contact the pilots on the flight.

Back at Newark, the pilots of United 93 finally are cleared for takeoff. A familar command is given. "Flight attendants: prepare for takeoff." For United 93, the point of no return has been reached.

Greengrass masterfully unfolds the events of the morning taking us from the plane to the decision makers-turned-bystanders at air traffic control centers in Boston, Cleveland, and New York. Sliney and his crew desperately try to gather information as one hijack after another becomes apparent.

This is a docudrama.
However, what separates this film from the melodramatic fare that normally occupy this genre is the near-total lack of melodrama. Greengrass assembled a cast of largely unknown actors to dramatize his work. In fact, a sizable portion of his cast includes actual participants in the various ground locations to which we are taken, especially the aforementioned Sliney.

However, the key cast member, which goes uncredited, is our memory (, or in the case of those not alive on that day, history). We remember what happened that day: in New York, in Washington, and on Flight 93.

We sit and watch a meticulous and dramatic re-creation of what may have happened that morning on Flight 93. Since no one survived, we will never know what actually happened. However, Greengrass' interviews including anecdotal accounts of telephone calls from the plane, cockpit transmissions, and other events probably come the closest to giving us a sense of what happened that day.

It has been said and written that it is too close to the moment for a film like United 93 to be released. Rather, for a film of this quality, it's not a moment too soon. Perhaps it will give us the impetus to ask the questions that should be asked about what happened that day and what continues to happen in our lives.

Never forget.

[My rating: 4½ stars out of 5]

Ciao for now!
Mike

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Trailer

Acclaimed filmmaker Paul Greengrass (Bloody Sunday, The Bourne Supremacy) writes and directs an unflinching drama that tells the story of the passengers and crew, their families on the ground and the flight controllers who watched in dawning horror as United Airlines Flight 93 became the fourth hijacked plane on the day of the worst terrorist attacks on American soil: September 11, 2001.