MOVIE REVIEW : 'United 93' sticks to the facts, doesn't resort to melodrama
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print thisTragic flight rolls in 81 minutes of real time
The release of "United 93," a fact-driven drama detailing what happened inside and outside the only hijacked airplane that failed to hit its target Sept. 11, 2001, has provoked, to no one's surprise, another round of questions and soul-searching.
News reports say people watching the trailer for the film in a New York theater shouted "too soon, too soon," the response Gilbert Gottfried received when he tried to tell a 9-11 joke at a roast attended mostly by other comics. What is the time limitation on turning tragedy into drama? Didn't the TV networks begin doing that minutes after the first plane hit the World Trade Center? What do the makers and marketers of the film hope to accomplish in retelling the story with actors and music cues? Isn't the reality dramatic enough?
Ask yourself
Underlying all this, of course, is the perhaps unanswerable question of "What do we go to the movies for?" If we go to be entertained, then "United 93" is exploitive. If we go to be provoked and confronted, "United 93" could be cathartic. Could it be both? By coincidence it seems, the movie, directed and written by Paul Greengrass, arrives shortly after the cockpit tapes retrieved from the wreckage were publicly aired at the trial of an alleged conspirator that itself added layers of questions about what happened.
The content of that recording and calls from the flight have been widely reported, so most of us have a reasonable assumption of what happened. Some passengers overcame the two terrorists in the cabin, then rushed to the cockpit that had been commanded by the two others. In the most heroic scenario, the passengers saved the lives of those inside the most-likely targets, the White House or the Capitol; at the least, they died fighting the forces of fear.
If "United 93" were entirely fiction, we could dismiss the issue of intent. Since that is not an option, we have to concede it is a story without resolution. It has, in screenwriter's parlance, no third act.
Using handheld cameras and other documentary techniques that have been widely appropriated by dramatic filmmakers during the past decade, Greengrass re-creates based on public record and the recollections of those on the ground what happened. The film shows Boston's Logan airport, where the passengers and hijackers boarded without event; inside the air traffic control centers in Boston and New York; the Northeast Air Defense Sector; the national office of the Federal Aviation Authority; and, on board United Airlines Flight 93, Boston to San Francisco, whose 81 minutes in the air are recounted in real time.
There are a few dramatic liberties taken one poor actor has the thankless task of representing an unnamed disaster-movie stereotype of the passenger who argues it would be better to do nothing, taking the terrorists at their words that no one will be harmed if they just cooperate. Still, Greengrass attempts to stick to the facts we know we know, which includes the 9-11 Commission Report's conclusion that chain-of-command errors contributed to the outcome.
Greengrass is never so obvious as to say, "Watch this hero," though he steers in the right direction with the camera, music cues and the carefully calibrated naturalistic performances. He has scrupulously avoided casting well-known faces. A couple of the most prominent characters, the FAA's Ben Sliney and NEAD's Major James Fox, play themselves and do it well, without calling undue attention.
Greengrass, a British filmmaker, was undoubtedly entrusted with this on the strength of "Bloody Sunday," an exceedingly fair-minded account of the 1972 Irish protest that ended in tragedy when British soldiers fired on the crowd. Yet "United 93" lacks the visceral gut-punch of his account of that sad but avoidable incident; it could have had more impact even without resorting to melodrama.
To ensure it didn't, Greengrass never cuts to the weeping wives and mothers and lovers who received goodbye calls from United 93. He also has chosen not to speculate on what cannot be proven the biggest mystery being the alleged breach of the cockpit or to dwell on the aftermath. (One shot of the downed wreckage, he presumes, would have been one too many.)
Raw emotions
That would have undoubtedly made "United 93" a more emotionally wrenching experience than it is, but it also would have left the film wide open to charges that it was undefensively manipulative a charge that might not have been as easily lobbed if he had the stature of "Munich" and "Schindler's List" director Steven Spielberg.
Despite that, I understand why many people will avoid "United 93." Though almost five years have passed, we remain raw and unsettled, and we will remain that way for years to come. Some of the families of the victims, all of whom apparently signed off on the movie, have said they will not see it. Those who do board this plane, though, are likely to leave it feeling, if not better, at least fortified. This, not the support of the war machine or political affiliation, is why we fight.