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United 93 Our rating: Rate this movie   MPAA rating: R (for language and some intense sequences of terror and violence) Genre: Drama, Historical Theater release: April 28, 2006 by Universal Studios Directed by: Paul Greengrass Runtime: 1 hour 51 minutes Cast: Khalid Abdalla (Ziad Jarrah), David Alan Basche (Todd Beamer), Cheyenne Jackson (Mark Bingham), Christian Clemenson (Thomas E. Burnett, Jr.), Peter Marinker (Andrew Garcia), Peter Hermann (Jeremy Glick), Trish Gates (Sandra Bradshaw), Ben Sliney (himself) Related: Talk About It/Family Corner

It is all too easy to imagine the ways in which the first major film about the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 could have gone wrong. On the one hand, it could have served as wartime propaganda, using the horrific events of that day to paint a mythic portrait of incipient heroism, full of stirring music and bold close-ups on the passengers as they rise to their feet with a cry of "Let's roll!" On the other hand, it could have bent over backward to give the story nuance, putting words in the terrorists' mouths designed to keep their hostages forever in doubt about the rightness of their decision to fight back, a la Steven Spielberg's Munich. But thankfully, United 93—which chronicles the hijacked flight that ultimately crashed into a Pennsylvania field, instead of its intended target in Washington, D.C.—avoids both of these approaches.

Hijacker Ahmed Al Haznawi (Omar Berdouni) prepares to board United Airlines Flight 93

Instead of anything so nakedly artificial, writer-director Paul Greengrass presents the events of that morning with a straightforward, matter-of-fact naturalism, as though he simply happened to have cameras in all the right places when the hijackings took place, catching the events as they unfolded. As with his earlier film Bloody Sunday, which concerned a Northern Irish civil-rights march that was attacked by British troops in 1972, he relies on hand-held cinematography and a cast made up mostly of unknowns to make his reconstruction of an historical event as realistic and documentary-like as possible.

The effect is to let the viewer draw his or her own conclusion from these events. But this is not to say that the film never steers our emotions, or our sympathies. Even though we know how the story will end, we do not know quite how it will get there, and Greengrass builds a fair bit of tension through careful edits and an ominous score, the latter courtesy of John Powell. As passengers and crew prepare for their flight, we see someone refuel the plane, and the word "flammable" is briefly, prominently displayed in the frame; normally, this might be an innocent detail, but in this story, we know exactly what it portends.

Passenger Todd Beamer, played by David Alan Basche, tries to reach home

The film also creates tension by introducing new "facts" that might not have occurred to us before. In one scene, the air traffic controllers can only watch helplessly as one of the hijacked planes, having deviated from its original course, seems to be on an unintentional collision course with another plane. And when the passengers aboard Flight 93 band together to fight back against the terrorists, they check first to see if any of them have the experience necessary to land the plane safely once they have taken it back; we know that they will never get the chance to do so, but for a moment, we hope that they might.

Perhaps most significantly, and daringly, the film creates tension by putting the terrorists at the center of the movie and allowing us to identify with them, sort of. They, after all, are the only ones who know what's coming, just as we who watch the movie know what's coming. As Flight 93 takes off from Newark, New Jersey, the terrorists look out the window at the World Trade Center towers in the distance, and unlike every other passenger on that plane, they know exactly what is going to happen to those buildings within the next half-hour—two other hijacked airliners will crash into the buildings, ultimately leveling them both and killing some 3,000 people.

The terrorists also seem to share our apprehension. One of the reasons the hijackers aboard Flight 93 failed to reach Washington, D.C. may be that they waited too long before taking over the plane, resulting in a much longer flight back east—and Greengrass speculates that the leader may have hesitated to go ahead with the plan, until his frustrated comrades pushed him. Early on, the film even goes so far as to show the leader placing a call to someone and saying "I love you," just as his victims will do. Is Greengrass humanizing the enemy? Of course. But none of the other hijackers is shown doing this—and the film may be suggesting that it was the leader's very humanity that held him back, for a while.

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