CNS Movie Review: United 93

United 93

By Harry Forbes
Catholic News Service

NEW YORK (CNS) -- Is it too soon for a big-screen drama about Sept. 11, 2001? Does anyone really want to relive the events of that awful day? Can any film that makes the attempt avoid the specter of exploitation?

Those questions will surely percolate in the minds of prospective ticket buyers.

Whatever one's apprehensions, "United 93" (Universal) scores as a tense, well-acted documentary-style drama about the hijacking of United Airlines flight 93 (one of four planes seized that day) when passengers fought back the terrorists. The ensuing melee brought down the plane, preventing the destruction of what was assumed would be a Washington landmark.

The film lays out the very ordinariness of that fateful morning in careful detail. As we watch the passengers going through all the standard airport procedures, working on their laptops, greeting the cheerful stewardesses, getting settled, ordering their special-diet meals, we know precisely what's going to happen, which only serves to build a mounting sense of dread.

So, too, we see the four terrorists coolly going through all the same motions as the regular passengers. Though they aren't demonized, apart from showing their heinous actions of course, you can't help but feel anger at such cold-blooded callousness.

Meanwhile, there are cutaways to various air traffic controllers (in New York; Newark, N.J.; Boston; Cleveland; and Herndon, Va.), disbelieving the early reports of a hijacking of an American Airlines flight out of Boston, and then struggling to make sense of the rapid series of multiple flights gone amuck, until they see the first plane hit the World Trade Center, and the pieces begin to fit.

Director Paul Greengrass takes a dispassionate approach and shoots in real time with a no-name cast. As noted, it's the normalcy in light of events to come that makes the film so hard to stomach, though the actual acts of violence -- once the hijackers make themselves known and take control -- are sensitively handled. The frantic camerawork and the kinetic editing mask much of the violence and bloodshed. Your imagination does most of the work.

The scenes of passengers calling their loved ones and telling them how much they love them are heart-wrenching. And the juxtaposition of desperate passengers saying the Lord's Prayer, while the terrorists in the cockpit are exclaiming "Allah is great" provides supreme irony.

The film was meticulously researched, and made with the approval of many -- if not all -- of the family members, with actual flight crew and air traffic control staffers (some on duty during Sept. 11) assuming some roles. What happened on that plane is, in large part, speculative, but nothing shown here seems out of bounds.

For all of Greengrass' artistic restraint, as in his film "Bloody Sunday" about terrorism in Northern Ireland, many will obviously find "United 93" extremely distressing, and the film will not be for them.

Yet as a testament to heroism and a vivid cautionary tale, the film was, on balance, a worthwhile endeavor. Though the tragedies of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon are only lightly touched upon, the microcosm of this particular event brings the entire day back to vivid life.

The film contains harrowing suspense, violence and bloodshed (though discreetly shot with quick editing), other disturbing Sept. 11 imagery, a smattering of profanity and four-letter words uttered under extreme distress. The USCCB Office for Film & Broadcasting classification is A-III -- adults. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is R -- restricted. Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian.

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Forbes is director of the Office for Film & Broadcasting of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

END

Copyright (c) 2006 Catholic News Service/USCCB. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed.
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