UNITED 93 [2006] review

January 8, 2007 · Print This Article

Paul Greengrass has written and directed UNITED 93 with respect and honor. No manipulation, no heavy-handedness, nothing like that when it could have been so easy to do. … I was not living in the U.S. on September 11, 2001 and had not been for over 15 months, so I felt and still feel a certain disconnect from those events. It was actually quite a miracle that on TV I saw the events take place in New York virtually from the beginning. I very rarely was around a TV at that time, living a nomadic existence between various friends apartments in South Korea. I don’t remember exactly, but I found CNN and saw the first tower just after it was struck, that’s when I tuned in. … While watching CNN’s coverage for that split second I said to myself, “is that another plane?” The huge explosion in the second tower confirmed it was and I was, like everyone else, totally shocked.

UNITED 93 showed what I already knew, that the Americans aboard that flight died with honor, they did not sit idly by, they represented. The Men who rushed the hijackers, even being able to gain access to the cockpit no less, died with honor, as any Man would want to.

…Greengrass I thought did very well in the final minutes of the film cutting back and forth to people praying to their respective god. Does one god want the death of other people? Does the other god not want to protect the other people?

…Many times a military commander asked when they could get the rules of engagement for being able to take down a commercial airliner, and how hard can it be to reach the president on this? Finally, in a one-sided conversation with the president, the necessary RoE was still not given. We know initially why it was so hard to reach the president, he was still talking to elementary school children for the first seven minutes after the initial plane hit the World Trade Center.

One technical quibble with the film, why did the oxygen masks never come out of the ceiling??

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