United 93

[Adam's Apple]

Here's another good article on this topic, with a strong opinion.

Not Too Soon For 9-11 Films
By Clarence Page, The Chicago Tribune
April 22, 2006

WASHINGTON-A lot of people have been fretting nationwide in recent weeks as to whether it's "too soon" for "United 93," the first big theatrical movie to deal with the events of Sept. 11. My response? Simply this: If not now, when?

Almost five years have passed since that fateful day when passengers aboard United Airlines Flight 93 from Newark to San Francisco rose up against al Qaeda hijackers and died in a remote part of Pennsylvania as heroes, the passengers who fought back.

It took less than five years after the fall of Saigon in 1975 to see high-quality, truly introspective Vietnam movies like "The Deer Hunter" (1978) and "Apocalypse Now" (1979). We supposedly do things faster these days.

for full article:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2006/04/not_too_soon_for_911_films.html

 

[Hobbit]

There were movies being made about WWII before it was even over.

I will definitely be seeing this movie, and I think it needs to be made for a very good reason. We all remember 9/11, and while it's debatable if and when any of us need a reminder of just how bad it was, the story in this movie needs to be told. When the other planes struck their targets, all the passengers sat there in passive disbelief as they quietly accepted their fate. All the action was right there on the news. The footage is still easily available. However, when flight 93 went down in Pennsylvania, one of the bravest skirmishes of our time was going on with no reporters, no cameras, indeed, no real log of what was going on. A group of 40 ordinary people who were already doomed to die further risked injury and what little time they had left (and indeed sacrificed that time) in order to save others, and while their story is known of, it has remained untold. The story of these heroes needs to be told, and those who think it's too soon are likely the ones who want to forget. The families have come to terms with what happened to their loved ones. Why can't you?

 

[Adam's Apple]

The families have come to terms with what happened to their loved ones. Why can't you?

If you're addressing me, I agree with your stand on this one. I think this story should be told, and it is definitely not too soon for a really good film version, as this reportedly is. Some guys on a cable talk show last week said they had seen the movie; they said it is so well done that you feel like you're actually on the airplane with those people.

 

[Dan]

There were movies being made about WWII before it was even over.

WWII wasn't a cowardly attack being waged against innocent civilians. This is a story about real individuals being murdered for something they had nothing to do with.

The story of these heroes needs to be told, and those who think it's too soon are likely the ones who want to forget.

I don't understand why so many people are so eager to point the finger at those who don't want to see this thing. "THEY want to forget!" First of all, I don't want to forget, nor will I ever forget, but why does it somehow make one more of a person to want to dwell on one of the darkest moments of the century (so far)?

The families have come to terms with what happened to their loved ones. Why can't you?

This makes no sense. By "coming to terms" with what happened to flight 93, isn't that the first step to accepting, and, eventually, forgetting?

If I want to be reminded of what happened, I can watch a documentary. Horrendous things happen every day in the world, that doesn't mean they need to be mass-marketed with huge dramatic music swells and heavy-handed imagery.

Where's the Columbine movie? I think I need to be reminded of what happened by watching some kids get shot in the face.

 

[Dan]

Some guys on a cable talk show last week said they had seen the movie; they said it is so well done that you feel like you're actually on the airplane with those people.

This is horrific. You'd have to be a big-time masochist to hear that and then want to watch this.

 

[Adam's Apple]

What's wrong with paying a compliment to Hollywood for what these men thought was an outstanding work of art? I too admire a well-made movie and want to see if I agree with them.

As far as being a masochist, I look at it as taking advantage of an opportunity to learn from the experiences of others, even if it is only via film. When terror comes knocking at your door, what is to be gained by burying your head in the sand or running away from it?

 

[Hobbit]

I see where you're coming from, Dan, and I don't really think you're one of the ones who just wants to forget, but I think documentaries are too sanitized. What happened on that plane was a dramatic experience, and I don't think showing a picture of the wreckage and having some guy explain how the passengers retook the plane really captures it.

And coming to terms is not the first step to forgetting. It's just a matter of acceptance. While you shouldn't forget things like this, you eventually have to accept the fact that yes, these people are dead and they're never coming back.

And I really don't get why people always want to describe making a movie about something as 'exploiting it.' Ten percent of the proceeds are going to the memorial. What more do you want? I mean, the guy isn't going to even be able to get the movie made if it's not going to turn some kind of profit. From what I've heard of the movie so far, I think 'exploitation' is far from the truth. It seems to be more of a tribute.

 

[Dan]

So, I've been reading reviews and whatnot, and I'm happy to see that the movie is done in a very straight-ahead and respectful way. I'm still not going to watch it and I'm still sort of against the idea, but I see where the supporters are coming from more now.

When terror comes knocking at your door, what is to be gained by burying your head in the sand or running away from it?

But, see, I don't think of NOT watching the movie as running away from terrorism. What does watching this movie do to stop terror?

I think documentaries are too sanitized.

You're right for the most part, Hobbit. The HBO documentary was the only one I saw that really didn't seem sanitized: they had voice mails sent from the planes, aftermath shots of "jumpers", etc. It was really hard to watch, it made me physically ill, and I don't really want to go through that again.


And, yes, the movie does seem like more of a tribute than exploitation, so I guess I was wrong about that. But, I was thinking about this today:

Movies are very much a group effort and everything has to be considered as far as artistic value, realism (at least in the case of this film), and budgetary constraints. So, that means that when one of the pilots gets killed, there's a special effects guy figuring out how to make the wound look real, a cinematographer figuring out how best to film it, two actors figuring out how best to kill and be killed, etc. It all just seems creepy to me.

And, as for my comment about Columbine, I'd forgotten about Elephant, which is a mostly real-time portrayal of the Columbine attack. That was upsetting, but it didn't upset me the way the idea of this movie does, for some reason. I guess 9/11 was a lot more affecting than Columbine, for me anyway.

 

[dmp]

The more I read about this movie, the harder it is to try to motivate myself to see it. I doubt any movie short of The Passion will move me, more.

 

[NATO AIR]

The more I read about this movie, the harder it is to try to motivate myself to see it. I doubt any movie short of The Passion will move me, more.

I think I could watch it once, but then just like the Passion, I never would watch it again, just too painful to see, hear and try to fathom.

 

[Dan]

Here's a quote from Roger Ebert's review that makes me feel better about the movie (though I'm still not watching it).

There has been much discussion of the movie's trailer, and no wonder. It pieces together moments from "United 93" to make it seem more conventional, more like a thriller. Dialogue that seems absolutely realistic in context sounds, in the trailer, like sound bites and punch lines. To watch the trailer is to sense the movie that Greengrass did not make.

 

[Abbey Normal]

It is a movie that needed to be made, the timing of it could be up for debate, but, whatever, it's done now.The fact that the hero's and heroines next of kin agreed to the making of it and endorsed it after viewing is reason enough for me to see this movie.It is apparently as close to what really happened as is possible to get, who cares if they used their 'Hollywood' license to big up the passengers and crew as supermen and women.I don't think there have been any greater American heros ever.

IMO those men and women that brought that plane down to save others deserve to be remembered, this movie could never pay enough tribute to them, they deserve more.Terrorists have lost a major weapon in their arsenal, hijacked planes.

Whether you wish to see this movie is a matter of personal choice, the emotions are too raw for some.My only real concern is that, no matter how good this movie may be a whole stack of cheap and nasty garbage will no doubt follow.

Good point roomy. I think we all now know that there is no point in going along with hijackers hoping you will survive. The rules changed on 9/11. I'll bet most Americans would fight to the death now.

 

[Dan]

My only real concern is that, no matter how good this movie may be a whole stack of cheap and nasty garbage will no doubt follow.

I hope to God you're wrong about this, but knowing Hollywood, you're probably right.

 

[Lefty Wilbury]

don't forget oliver stone has a 9-11 movie coming out. seeing how nutty he went with jfk you can just imagine what he'll do to 9-11

 

[Annie]

I just came back from seeing it, it was close to sold out at 4:15 showing, so I imagine the evening ones will be. While I wouldn't want to see it again, I think more than ever everyone should see this. I find it nearly impossible to describe, though at one point I was hoping the passengers would gain control. I suppose this has more to do with movie going than the film. In case you haven't read much about the film, you 'see' the other attacks through the 'eyes' of air traffic control, FAA, and Norad.

Some better take than mine, links at site:

http://varifrank.com/archives/2006/04/united_93_and_o.php

United 93 and Our "Survivors Guilt"

One year, during Easter break, I learned a valuable lesson. Every year during Easter, my cousins and I would go to my Grandparents house in San Simeon for the break in the school year. My cousins and I were practically the only kids in the area, as it was a very small coastal town, populated almost exclusively by retirees like my grandparents. It was a great time to spend with my cousins and my grandparents. Rock hunting along the shore or rabbit hunting in the hills, it was a great place to be a kid, and the company was as good as it gets. My grandfather was a walking encyclopedia. Every rock had a story, every plant a potential use. Glass floats found on the beach were given a sense of reality as he told us how they were made and where they came from and how long they had probably been floating before we found them. “The chief” is what my dad and uncles called him, but he was always just “granddad” to us kids. He was a hero in the world during a time and in a culture that was without the virtue of heroes.

One day I came back from the beach by myself and as I came into the house and slammed the screen door behind me. My grandfather was sleeping on the sofa, but when the bang of the screen door reverberated through the house, he leapt up off the sofa exactly the way that 80 year old men don’t and electrified cats often do.

I will never forget the look of stark terror that was on his face, and although he was looking right at me, it was as if I wasn’t there. In just one moment he had gone from snoring and sleeping away the afternoon on the sofa to standing in a cold sweat, looking confused and terrified.

That metallic screen door sound as it slapped the inside of the doorframe had just the right timbre, just the right pitch to send a nightmare loose into the mind of my sleeping grandfather. In one moment it was 1968 and he was sleeping on the sofa. The next, he was years in the past on the little “tin can” of the USS Fletcher, below decks and being shelled by the battleships of Imperial Japanese Navy while running through “the slot”. Of course at the time I knew none of this past history, all I knew is that I was going to catch hell for waking my grandfather in the middle of his afternoon nap.

“You have to be careful honey, that screen door does something horrible to your grandfather. So promise me you’ll be more careful with it, ok?” My grandmother said into my ear in a quiet whisper as she leaned down to guide me out of the room as my grandfather tried to compose himself as he sat down, head in hand, somewhat embarrassed to have been caught so emotionally exposed. I nodded yes to her in return, all the while wondering when the punishment for my act would come. But there was to be none. It was a simple accident and she knew it, it was one that she herself had caused several times over the years, witnessing over and over again, recognizing but never knowing the cause for the involuntary screams of a man who had survived what so many others didn’t and the damage the guilt that survival had left behind on his soul. That sound, that sudden metallic clang made in the afternoon of the happy years in soft retirement along the California shore during the 1960’s was just enough to transport a man back into a creosote, sweat and black coffee soaked moonless night that that was long over on the calendar, but never more than a moment away in his resting mind. A dark night in the uncertain summer in the South Pacific when all that stood between life and death for those below decks was the all too thin grey bulkheads of a very small ship. An inch of steel and the roll of the dice of fate is all that anyone below decks on that ship had to protect them from the strike of the deadly “long lance”. This was the enemy’s backyard, and they didn’t call it “Iron bottom sound” because of the minerals found there. It was because so much of our navy had already been sunk there and the floor of the sea was littered with our ships that were far bigger, far more capable than the little USS Fletcher.

That night of monotonous terror that lived in the memory of my grandfather and the war itself were long since over and well in the past, but they had really never left the mind of the man who had witnessed it first hand. The watch he stood that night had never really ended and that screen door rang like the dinner bell for the beast I accidentally unleashed that ate into his soul.

He had lived through it, and yet, so many others with him that night had not. The guilt of survival was far more punishing to him than what the enemies aim had brought. It ate at his soul like acid on a metal plate.

You see, time does not heal all wounds; it merely schedules them for surgery and forgets to provide the anesthesia.

Yesterday, I thought about my grandfather and the incident with the screen door when I grappled with the question of whether or not to go see United 93 this weekend. I don’t for one second believe that my life is anything at all like my grandfathers, yet I too suffer from a bit of survivor’s guilt. Once upon a time, I was a “road warrior” and I have on occasion flown out of Boston on Tuesday mornings. I have over 500,000 miles on United Airlines and therefore the world of “air travel perks decision making” would have put me on a United Airlines flight before all the other possible choices. I believe that in the past, I probably have flown that same flight, on a different day and a different year.

I stopped living the “road warrior” life in 2000. In my time as a road warrior, I have witnessed passengers in the midst of a psychotic episode being subdued by the crew as the person tried to open the door in flight. I’ve missed other flights that have crashed, killing other co-workers, but nothing has effected me like the story of United 93. To me, it is not an abstract story of other peoples suffering. It is the sense of guilt that comes from the surviving of it all that eats at my soul.

United Flight 93 claimed the lives of several of my company’s employees. They were people just like me, who were doing business one day and returning home the next, doing by air what most people do with the crosstown bus. But for a small change in my career decisions and personal desires during the preceding 12 months before 9/11/01; one of the September 11th flights might very well have been a flight that, I too, would have been on and most certainly would have died like all the others. I cannot look at any pictures from that day without thinking, “it could’ve been me on that plane”. Its very unsettling to see your potential death scene replayed over and over.

I once missed a flight that a co-worker had managed to catch, on which he was later killed. Yes, that event bothers me too, but September 11th is something else altogether. It wasn’t an "accident of icing" that caused the deaths on that September day; it was a deliberate murder. They were trying to kill us; it was something deeply personal that a regular plane crash, no matter how close a shave it was, could ever be.

Like most people who fly commercial and maintain some form of private pilot rating, I often find myself on long flights daydreaming about the “what ifs”. People who are pilots like myself often ask ourselves “if there’s a problem with the pilot, could I get in the cockpit and fly this plane?”. This is absurd, but we ask it to ourselves as if it was a real possibility. We ask ourselves if we know the location of the flaps and landing gear on a 737 like it might be important to know that sort of thing, as if holding a private pilots license holds you responsible in some way to the airline.

We ask ourselves what would we do first and what would we do to be sure, to be certain that the plan would land, even though we never flew anything bigger than a Cessna 172. Before September 11th, it was just a way to kill time, a harmless “Walter Mitty-ish” daydream to help kill the choking tedium that comes with long distance flights in coach while pressed up against the fuselage with a kid kicking the seat back, wishing we were anywhere but 30,000 feet in the dry air over Kansas with another 3 hours to go before we are released from our imprisonment..

We all know the plot to the movie “Airport” and we all think we are the Dean Martin character in the movie. Life however, is not a movie plot, life is often cruel and unforgiving and things in the world often fall right to hell, even for very good people and innocent children.

It is because of these mid-flight “Walter Mitty” adventures that I knew the morning of the massacre that the hijackers had used the Hudson River as a visual reference to guide them to Manhattan. I knew it before noon on that very day. I knew it, because I had seen it outside my window on many flights, and I too knew that as long as I followed that clearly defined river, that I could find the fabled island of Manhattan. There was no need to practice using navigation aids like GPS. Just look out the window, follow the river, and look out for the big buildings and dive when the time is right. It was as simple as that. I knew the moment I saw the attack that they had planned with ruthless efficiency to attack on just the right day – a clear autumn day with both ceiling and visibility unlimited, and using just the perfect visual landmark, a wide straight river that crossed right in front of the path of the aircraft to ensure that they could get to their target on their limited skill set. I knew that they had planned it well enough to know that it really doesn’t take a whole lot of training to steer and commercial airliner in mid flight. It takes training to land and takeoff, and they had no intention of doing either one. I fully recognized the cleverness of the attack. No bombs to be sniffed, to guns to be detected, just raw muscle and simple, supposedly harmless, box cutters tied to the applied use of terror physical against the passengers. I knew, that even though there were many hijackers on a flight that only the ones who took over the cockpit and actually flew the plane knew the full intentions of their mission. The “bully boys” that kept the crew and passengers at bay outside the cockpit were as surprised as anyone that they were actually on a suicide mission.

Until September 11th, all hijackings were just bad TV drama. You land somewhere, make faces at the camera, express grievances, and they may kill a passenger or two, only to be let off the hook by the well meaning folks at the UN. On September 11th. The “bully boys” thought they were getting their name in lights, but only the hijackers cockpit crews knew they were the “New Divine Wind”

After United 93, that all stopped. Admit it; that every time you get on an airline today, you check out the passengers as potential threats. You size them up. Is that guy a cop or a whackjob? What kind of shoes are those? Is that person acting in any way that might give away their actual intent? You are polite to all, but inwardly suspicious of everyone at the same time. There’s not as much small talk on airlines these days. You don’t offer to play a game of cards with the person sitting next to you anymore. You sit, you scan, you watch. You glance at the crew, and you nod to them in acknowledgement of what you both know but dare not express out loud.

I know the story of United 93, but the written word doesn’t tell the story like a movie does. Movies are just a step away from dreams, or in this case, a nightmare. Movies imprint on the mind in a different way that the written word. For weeks after September 11th, I don’t think I was able to sleep more than a few hours at a time. I always snapped bolt upright in a sweat at the scene of the aircraft hitting the towers and knowing, really knowing what that scene really represented. It wasn’t a machine crashing; it was people in the act of dying. They were dying deliberately and by the design of a group of madmen. In those months of no sleep and nightmares, it always felt that in my dreams, the planes weren’t hitting the WTC; they were hitting me for my crime of “not being there”.

The worst thing that the massacre of that day has left me with is a nagging sense of guilt that lingers in the back of my mind. Somehow I have been left somewhat hollow by the experience. After the day the massacre had occurred and dice of fate had been thrown, I had gone on to see more sunrises and sunsets, while others in my company, had not. I do not know how to explain it or account for it; I just know that it is simply the way it is and over time I will learn to accept it for what it is.

I have done nothing in my life that should rationally cause a case of survivors guilt over the events of September 11th, but I cannot shake the horrible sense that I have let those people down in some cosmic way. It’s not rational to feel this way, I recognize that, but I can’t shake the feeling that in our day-to-day luxury of life that we have lived since that September 11th, that we’ve missed the point of what they so clearly understood in moments before it all ended for the people on United 93.

That we are under attack by madmen who want nothing more than to simply kill us all.

They wish not to negotiate territory or borders. They simply wish to kill us all. Its is not our “support of the Jews” which has caused their grievance, its our very existence. Their God has forsaken them, and rather than face up to the shame generated by that fact, they choose instead to seek vengeance against those that appear to have found Gods favor. They hate happiness and freedom in every form, and wish only the worst conditions on all mankind. We can no more accept the Jihadi conditions for our surrender than the people of United 93 could just sit in their seats.

The United 93 movie represents something else besides a just a movie. It’s the ugly and cold metric of commerce. There are a number of people in the business of producing movies who are betting that Americans won’t go to see this movie. They believe that people do not wish to be reminded of that day. They do not think that Americans will go to see what happened. If United 93 were to fail, it would give rise to the myth that “Americans do not support the war”, which is becoming less a call for “leaving Iraq”, and more often than not is now a call to return to the days of the 1990s, when threats were ignored and allowed to fester into the embolism of 9/11.

They find it very easy to make a movie that drives a wedge into the country and destroys the morale of free people while it gives comfort to our enemies, like “Fahrenheit 9/11”, or creates a series of unsustainable paranoid theories like “Syriana”. But to make a movie about the first battle in the war against terror and show citizens as heroes, that is simply beyond the people who run Hollywood. Its extremely important to me that United 93 does well at the marketplace, because if it were to fail, it would give comfort to those who say there is no heroism in fighting back, that there is only heroism in defeat and dissention.

If United 93 fails at the box office, the war on terror will be re-written in our popular culture the way that returning Vietnam vets were re-written from normal people into murdering psychopaths let loose on the general population. Like it or not, what passes for popular culture very often serves as the basis of history. Popular culture is often the lens by which historical events are later interpreted.

If we are not careful to support this movie because of our collective sense of “survivors guilt”, then the failure of United 93 will serve as a springboard for furthering the cause defeatism that permeates most of modern era popular culture. No matter our victories in this war of which United 93 represents just the first, popular culture is already working to marginalize them as inconsequential. A ‘defeat at the marketplace” of United 93, will further make the case for those who think we must “lose to win” in their perverted logic in the worship of failure.

I do not know yet if I can go into a theater this weekend and watch a movie like United 93, but I do know that whether I choose at this point to see the movie or not, I will be buying a ticket to ensure that the legacy of that story is given the respect that it deserves by popular culture.

Hollywood knows nothing and cares not what tale is that is actually being told on the screen, but it does respect what happens at the box office. It will notice either a success or a failure and will react accordingly.

Like the sound of the screen door was eventually to be accepted as “just a noise” by my grandfather, I will also learn to look at movies about 9/11 as “just a movie” without an overwhelming sense of survivors guilt. Someday I will look at pictures of the 9/11 massacres and I wont feel that somehow that I failed the people on those planes.

UPDATE: Reviews for 'United 93' can be found here.

 

[BATMAN]

Glad you got to see it Kathianne. My son and I were going to go see it this past Sat but the local theatres aren't carrying it here. I would have to drive 100 miles round trip to catch it at the nearest place showing it.

Hopefully it will make it here in a week or two.

 

[Annie]

I could point to more esoteric sites, but I think this may be more compelling. The blogger is funny, if you dig farts and belches, not to mention AA...:

http://gutrumbles.com/archives2/004625.php#004625

May 07, 2006
my need to share

Because I'm such a giving kind of guy, I am compelled to share something with you. It's an Amazon review of the movie United 93, written by an obviously deranged individual a thoughtful conspiracy theorist.

This guy really is gonna be pissed when he discovers that his phone is tapped by Karl Rove.

Reviewer: Tom M. Sweeney (Las Cruces, NM) - I see reviews of people praising this movie as a "herioc" moment in Americas history. The truth could not be farther from it.

People in American need to wake up, this kind of propoganda is being fed to the US daily, this movie is nothing more than a lie to back up the "official" government story.

Why did experts on the site of the United 93 describe it as looking as though "someone had dug a ditch, and dropped scrap metal in it".

Why did the official corener on the scene report no blood being seen or gathered?

Why was United 93 reported as landing at an airport, and having the passengers evacuated.

Why did United 93 remain listed as an active airliner, after the 2 jets used in the WTC attacks were removed?

How were passangeres on board the plane able to make cell phone calls when experts have concluded such calls would have a next to the nothing % chance of going through. And why would America Airlines later spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to make it possible to use cell phones in airliners? Because the calls from the airline on 9/11 were lies.

Simple research will tell you the truth.

IT IS NOT ANTI PATRIOTIC TO STAND UP AGAINST YOUR GOVERNMENT!

Our United States Of America was founded because the pilgrams were tired of the leader ship of the King. They stood up against what they knew was wrong. If every person out there, refuses to argue with the governments side of the story, we are letting down the people that died to let this country exsist.

Do not become another blind follwer of propoganda, do proper research yourselves, and the truth will shine upon you.

Do not support this movie.​

That's right. DO NOT become another blind follower "follwer" of propaganda.

Just listen to those screaming voices inside your head.

Posted by Acidman @ 11:33 AM

 

[Annie]

I don't think it's an overstatement:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/05/AR2006050501661.html

Civic Duty: Go See 'United 93'

By George F. Will
Sunday, May 7, 2006; B07

In most movies made to convey dread, the tension flows from uncertainty about what will happen. In "United 93," terror comes from knowing exactly what will happen. People who associate cinematic menace with maniacs wielding chain saws will find that there can be an almost unbearable menace in the quotidian -- in the small talk of passengers waiting in the boarding area with those who will murder them, in the routine shutting of the plane's door prior to departure from Newark Airport on Sept. 11, 2001.

But two uncertainties surrounded "United 93": Would it find an audience? Should it?

It has found one, which is remarkable, given that in 2005 most moviegoers -- 57 percent -- were persons 12 to 29 years old. Twenty-nine percent were persons 12 to 24. These age cohorts do not seek shattering, saddening experiences to go with their popcorn.

But in its first weekend "United 93" was the second most-watched movie, with the top average gross per theater among major releases. It was on 1,795 screens, and 71 percent of viewers were 30 or older.

To the long list of Britain's contributions to American cinema -- Charles Chaplin, Bob Hope, Cary Grant, Stan Laurel, Deborah Kerr, Vivien Leigh, Maureen O'Hara, Ronald Colman, David Niven, Boris Karloff, Alfred Hitchcock and others -- add Paul Greengrass, writer and director of "United 93." He imported into Hollywood the commodity most foreign to it: good taste. This is especially shown in the ensemble of unknown character actors and non-actors who play roles they know -- a real pilot plays the pilot, a former flight attendant plays the head flight attendant -- and several persons who play on screen the roles they played on Sept. 11.

Greengrass's scrupulosity is evident in the movie's conscientious, minimal and minimally speculative departures from the facts about the flight painstakingly assembled for the Sept. 11 commission report. This is emphatically not a "docudrama" like Oliver Stone's execrable "JFK," which was "history" as a form of literary looting in which the filmmaker used just enough facts to lend a patina of specious authenticity to tendentious political ax-grinding.

A New York Times story on the "politics of heroism" dealt with the question of whether the movie was "inclusive."

Well, perhaps. "United 93" did violate some egalitarian nicety by suggesting that probably not all the passengers were equally heroic. Amazingly, no one has faulted the movie for ethnic profiling: All the hijackers are portrayed as young, fervently devout Muslim men. Report Greengrass to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.

In a movie as spare and restrained as its title, the only excess is the suggestion, itself oblique, that the government response was even more confused than was to be expected. Most government people, like the rest of us, were in the process of having their sense of the possible abruptly and radically enlarged.

Going to see "United 93" is a civic duty because Samuel Johnson was right: People more often need to be reminded than informed. After an astonishing 56 months without a second terrorist attack, this nation perhaps has become dangerously immune to astonishment. The movie may quicken our appreciation of the measures and successes -- many of which must remain secret -- that have kept would-be killers at bay.

The editors of National Review were wise to view "United 93" in the dazzling light still cast by a Memorial Day address, "The Soldier's Faith," delivered in 1895 by a veteran of Ball's Bluff, Antietam and other Civil War battles. Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. said why understanding that faith is important:

"In this snug, over-safe corner of the world . . . we may realize that our comfortable routine is no eternal necessity of things, but merely a little space of calm in the midst of the tempestuous untamed streaming of the world, and in order that we may be ready for danger. . . . Out of heroism grows faith in the worth of heroism."

The message of the movie is: We are all potential soldiers. And we all may be, at any moment, at the war's front, because in this war the front can be anywhere.

The hinge on which the movie turns are 13 words that a passenger speaks, without histrionics, as he and others prepare to rush the cockpit, shortly before the plane plunges into a Pennsylvania field. The words are: "No one is going to help us. We've got to do it ourselves." Those words not only summarize this nation's situation in today's war but also express a citizen's general responsibilities in a free society.

 

[Jimmyeatworld]

I find it nearly impossible to describe, though at one point I was hoping the passengers would gain control. I suppose this has more to do with movie going than the film.

I saw it yesterday and found myself doing the same thing. It's a very emotional movie, obviously, and it was a sad feeling when I realized that wasn't going to happen and I already knew how it was going to end.

I'd recommend everyone see it. They show the terrorists as the murderers they are and not some misunderstood victims of world opinion. It's a good documentation of the timeline, and it revealed a couple of things to me that I didn't know happened with trying to track the planes and all. The movie goes into real time when the passengers board the plane and gives a good idea of just how short an hour or so is when dealing with that kind of situation.

There were more than a couple of sniffles in the audience when the movie was over. I can't say I didn't tear up a bit myself.