'United 93' evokes terror of attacks
PLOT: A cinema-verite documentary-style depiction of
the events on Sept. 11, 2001, that led a planeload of passengers to fight back
against the hijackers.
Let's say you could make up a "verboten list" for the first Hollywood movie
about 9/11. By process of elimination, you just might just come up with
something like United 93.
To wit: No jaw-thrusting heroics against swelling strings, no movie stars
whose offscreen lovelife competes with the movie, no backstories where doomed
passengers happily kiss their kids goodbye. No pandering. No schmaltz.
In short, United 93 is the 9/11 movie to see if you're ready to see a 9/11
movie. Of course that's a very big "if."
It may be that United 93 is as doomed as its subject -- the flight whose
passengers fought back and averted the destruction of the Capitol Building. Lord
knows, I found it hard to watch and couldn't honestly say I'd pay to repeat the
experience.
But Brit director Paul Greengrass is to be commended for presenting the
events as humanely and scrupulously as he does. The cast is a mix of real
airline crew and control-tower employees who were on duty during the Sept. 11
tragedy with little-known pros (like SCTV bit player David Rasche and Denny
Dillon of the cable sitcom Dream On). Their combined delivery is so
"non-actory," and the camera work so on-the-fly, you'd think there just happened
to be cameras in the room in various control/command centres and onboard the
plane.
Greengrass' movie, based in large part on the 9/11 Commission Report, is an
odd experience. Watching it, you feel the opposite of suspense, something like
impatience tinged with anger. This is particularly true when you see the
reactions of controllers and civil aviation officials as the horror occurred.
Air traffickers joke around as the word "hijack" circulates about the room --
there hadn't been one in years, and suicide hijacking wasn't even a concept. As
events move along, we discover that the various levels of civil authority didn't
play well: The FAA wouldn't grant air clearance to military jets, for example,
and everyone waited forever for the President to act.
The snapshot we get is that not only should United 93 not have had any chance
of hitting Washington, it should not even have got off the ground (it took off
40 minutes late). For that matter, American Airlines flight 100 should never
have reached the Pentagon. Conversely, who knows if the Capitol might not have
survived had FAA official Ben Sliney (who plays himself) not overstepped his
authority and shut down air traffic across the country over the objections of
virtually everybody.
The irony of United 93 is that relatively little of it takes place on the
flight.
The part that matters is the last 10 minutes, in which the passengers find
out about the World Trade Center hits via cellphone, assess the slit throats of
their pilots and fellow passengers and face the grim reality that these
hijackers plan to die. Again, the acting is non-actory - particularly David
Allan Basche as Todd Beamer, whose "Let's roll" is less battle-cry than
impatient mutter and prelude to desperate chaos.
There will be some whose reason to watch will be in that last scene, wherein
hijackers get beaten bloody and eyes get gouged.
Revenge is served cold in United 93, to a clinical degree.
BOTTOM LINE: Scrupulously made with virtually no Hollywood pandering or
schmaltz, and almost flawless in its verite approach, this is the 9/11 movie to
see if you're ready to see a 9/11 movie. Of course that's a big "if."
(This film is rated 14-A)