Hey, everyone. Capone in Chicago here.
This might be the most emotional I've ever gotten writing a review. I saw the film last week, and when I finally decided my head was in the right place to finally write about this film, I kept starting, stopping, thinking, reflecting, writing, second-guessing, trying to separate the emotion about the actual events this film portray from emotions the film actually generates. I finally gave up, United 93 is an emotional experience that some people are going to want to have and some won't. There's no use getting into a debate about it. I have as much respect for those desperate to see it as I do those who are terrified to do so. So here I go...
Try to remember how you felt that day. I thought I had a pretty clear recollection of my state of mind on September 11, 2001, but watching writer-director Paul Greengrass' United 93 brought it all back so clearly that I was stunned by the power and weight of my own extremely emotional memories. At least on that first day, I didn't feel anger (that came later, probably the next day). I felt helpless and scared and fearing for my future. A lot of you reading this may be too young to remember or realize that there was an entire generation of children in the early to mid-1980s who had vivid nightmares of dying in a nuclear holocaust. I don't want to turn this review into something political (the film stays clear of doing so, and so will I), but I put the full weight of my early-teen nightmares on Ronald Reagan's shoulders. And the fear that I woke up with daily in my youth is exactly the fear I felt on 9/11, and I was genuinely stunned that a film could ever make me feel that way.
Without getting into discussions about what I was doing on September 11 or my feelings about our reigning president or our presence in the Iraq and Afghanistan or the appropriateness of United 93 being made at all (these are all topics of conversation that seeing this film had led to in the days since I saw it), I will simply say that United 93 is one of the finest films I have ever seen about a single day in history, a moment in time that changed the modern world, and no amount of praise for it is too high. By simply allowed the events to unfold, Greengrass has not only makes what I believe is a wholly accurate account of that day and event in history, but also he shows us that the passengers on that flight were not heroes before they stepped onto that fated flight, but collectively they knew that dying as helpless, cowardly pawns was not an option. Without adding artificial drama, background on any of his subjects, or any exploitative elements, Greengrass serves us the story of what happened to those poor people who ended up in an empty field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
If you've seen Greengrass' Bloody Sunday then you know he is a master craftsman when it comes to structuring a story (expect this film to get an Oscar nod for editing, at the very least). The film opens with scenes that make us more uncomfortable than we will want to admit: shots of the soon-to-be-hijackers praying in their hotel rooms before going to the airport in Newark, New Jersey. The flight crew is beginning is pre-board routine, air traffic controllers are switching shifts and anticipating a fairly easy day thanks to clear skies across the country, passengers are just beginning to check in. The suspense is with us from the second the film begins. The fact that Greengrass is able to create and build any tension at all is impressive, considering everyone who sees this film knows exactly how it ends and that it ends badly for so many innocent lives.
But this is no ordinary movie. What is also so perfect about United 93 is that for the first half of the movie, almost nothing out of the ordinary happens on that flight. Greengrass takes advantage of this period of apparent downtime to focus on the goings on with various air traffic controllers and military personnel (most of whom are non actors playing themselves) trying to make sense of the early minutes of the first two hijackings, the planes that ultimately went into the World Trade Center towers. We never see any events from any other plane, so most of the action consists of men and women starring at their screens and listening for any hint of what might be going on in those captured aircrafts. It never crosses anybody's mind that these planes will do anything more than land at a nearby airport, and the hijackers will issue some sort of demands. When the first plane disappears of their radar over lower Manhattan, they don't even realize that it has gone into a building until someone turns on CNN. The chaos that follows is infuriating, but it's surprisingly difficult to pinpoint where to aim your anger and frustration. The nation simply had no plan for this kind of attack.
About a year before 9/11, I had read the Tom Clancy novel Debt of Honor (in which a pilot crashes a commercial airliner into the Capitol Building during a State of the Union address, wiping out the entire U.S. government), and I remember my first thought as I began to comprehend what was going on during 9/11 was "This is just like the Tom Clancy story," which was written in 1994. How could they not have been prepared for this kind of attack, no matter how unlikely? Those same thoughts forced their way back into my brain as I watched United 93. Watching those poor air traffic controllers, who spend their entire careers keeping planes from crashing into each other or other things, lay witness to the second plane go into the second tower is almost too much to handle. The chaos was simply overwhelming. At some points there were so many planes that might have been hijacked, the media began reporting unsubstantiated reports that fires were erupting at the Mall in Washington, D.C. And Greengrass captures it all with his essential hand-held camera work, which takes you out of your usual position as a distanced observer of the action and makes you an active participant in events you want no part of.
Once flight 93 is taken over by hijackers, the film rarely jumps away from those constrictive confines. There is no one actor that stands out in my mind as being a standout performance because there isn't supposed to be. The cast is a mixture of unknown or somewhat familiar faces, whose names aren't important. (I did notice that the actor who plays the president in The Sentinel plays a passenger, as does an actor who has had a recurring role on "Boston Legal" lately.) As much as we'd like to believe that all of the passengers stood up tall and brave to fight back, that simply wasn't the case, and the film isn't afraid to show us that. There's not an ounce of criticism toward those people who were too terrified to take part in the attempting retaking of the plane; I'm not sure I would have done much better under the circumstances. But the film's final moments are nothing short of miraculous. The storming of the cabin, the hand-to-hand fighting with the terrorists, and the attempt to regain control of the flight controls (there were passengers who probably could have brought the plane in safely) as the hijacker flying the plane jerks the vehicle side to side in an attempt to throw the passengers off their feet.
I'm guessing about half the audience at any screening of United 93 will close their eyes during its closing minutes. It's just so unfathomably overwhelming, and it so completely goes against everything we've come to expect from films in general. Aren't the heroic characters supposed to survive and beat out evil? When we sit down in a darkened theatre, ready to down fistfuls of salty, greasy popcorn, we want to be entertained and ultimately leave an action film (that's essentially what United 93 is, right?) feeling empowered and better about the power of good over bad. The fact that the passengers of United 93 probably saved the lives of hundreds, maybe thousands of people on the ground (its target was believed to be the Capitol Building) doesn't quite make up for the way this film ends. It goes against everything we've experienced up to now as moviegoers. This is what happens when real life slams head first into our fantasy lives. I hope that at some point in my career, I have the opportunity to meet or speak with Paul Greengrass to thank him for making this movie.
More than a docudrama, United 93 might be the finest film I see all year. It's certainly the one that will be the hardest to shake. Everyone who sees it will have a different reaction to it, I'm sure, but I guarantee, you will have a powerfully undeniable reaction. See it with someone you trust and love; you're going to need each other.
Capone
capone@aintitcoolmail.com
capone@aintitcoolmail.com
