United 93 Reviews

The reviews are starting to come out for the 9/11 movie about United Flight 93 which crashed in a field in Pennsylvania. First, from Mary Katherine Ham posting at HughHewitt.com:

I saw United 93 yesterday.

I'm not sure if I can use this word as an adjective, but it keeps coming to mind, so here goes. It was shaking. I was shaken. I was shaky. However you want to say it, that's what it did.

It was also, at turns, moving, eerie, creepy, heavy, stark, gritty, exhilarating. I'm not gonna lie. It wasn't easy to watch. But I'm glad I watched it.

You can read the rest of it here.

And from the Hollywood Reporter:

Press notes for motion pictures are usually filled with dispensable, self-congratulatory puffery, but the one for the soul-searing film "United 93" contains this trenchant comment from its English writer-director, Paul Greengrass: Speaking of the 40 individuals aboard United Airlines Flight 93, the fourth hijacked plane on that day of infamy, Sept. 11, 2001, he notes that these were the only passengers and crew members on any of those ill-fated flights who knew about the other planes having been used as weapons and realized what was happening to them. "They were the first people to inhabit the post-9/11 world," Greengrass says. These were the first to react to the worldwide conflict we find ourselves in today. Within the microcosm of that reaction, Greengrass has made an emphatic political document, a movie about defiance against tyranny and terrorism.

How many moviegoers will be willing to endure "United 93"? I suspect many will, but what that adds up to in terms of boxoffice is anybody's guess. Understandably, controversy engulfs this film. Is now the right time for such a film? Why make the film at all? These are legitimate questions. No one possesses a "right" answer. But Greengrass has made not only a thoroughly fact-checked film but a film that incontrovertibly comes from the heart.

You can read the rest here.

So far no one is predicting terrific box office success for this movie. Many people will find it difficult to relive that day, and won't want to see a movie in which they know going in that all of the heroes die. Since everyone already knows the story, there won't be many surprises for the audience, other than the emotional reactions they may have.

You also won't see any Oscar nominations for this film, except maybe in some obscure technical category. Given the subject matter, Hollywood won't be excited about promoting it.

I haven't decided yet whether I will go see it. When I go to the movies I want to be laugh and be entertained, and this movie certainly won't do that. What will be interesting is to see if the box office numbers pick up or sharply decline as the word-of-mouth reviews start going out from the first weekend's viewers.

UPDATE: Don't miss this article from passenger Todd Beamer's father.