UNITED 93 REVIEW:
Up until recently, I was in the camp of people who thought it was way too soon for Hollywood to start cranking out the 9/11 movies. I remember last year, when I attended NBC's upfront presentations as a member of the NBC Page Program. At that time, NBC rolled out a huge preview for 9-11 - the TV miniseries - and the reaction in the room said it all. As the bombastic music played and the list of big-name Hollywood players rolled - Ron Howard was set to exec-produce - the room was filled with groans, head-shakes, and murmurs of "I can't believe they're doing this." Since that time, NBC scrapped the project, and it was probably a wise move. Nobody wanted to see the still-fresh horror of that day made into an over the top, melodramatic TV show. And you know, it's tricky, because in the current political climate people are so skeptical of Hollywood. IT's too liberal, it's too focused on the profits. Nobody looks to Hollywood anymore as a source of real art, of real politics, of real food for thought. And that is pretty sad. Because what we have in United 93 is not like ANYTHING that Hollywood has ever produced. This is WORLD'S APART from the bombastic WWII movies of old, miles away from the head-trip stylings of the Vietnam films like Apocalypse Now. This is a YOU-ARE-THERE movie, totally removed from what one expects from a typical movie or television show. No real politics, no artificial melodrama, no scenery-chewing actors or overly scripted dialouge.
And that's why, as I read more about the movie, I saw that the questionable marketing campaign of United 93 betrayed the true importance of this movie. In general, I agree with many others that it IS too soon to make 9/11 into a typical Hollywood movie. I have little desire to see Nicholas Cage running around playing the hero in wartorn New York City. Cage had better give the absolute performance of his life for that one to be watchable. But United 93 is different. It's a wake up call, almost a reminder of how REAL those events were and how they were NOT merely the biproducts of some screenwriter's imagination. And that, in my opinion, is an important message that is not too soon to put out there - in fact, I'm glad it's been said before it's too late ...
After 9/11, one of the first big media responses actually came from the comic book industry, when Marvel put out a commemorative magazine called HEROES - basically a collection of pinups by top artists and a few short text pieces. There were some amazing pieces of art in that magazine, and seeing some of those works really was an amazing catharsis following the events of 9/11. We were all looking for heroes in the wake of the tragedy, and books like this one and the subsequent volumes produced by DC and other companies transplanted these comic-book derived heroic ideals from the realm of fiction into the real world. In any case, that magazine HEROES had this one amazing piece of art, by a guy named Igor Kordev, that imagined what the passenger-led revolt against the terrorist hijackers might have looked like, and I remember at the time how that picture blew me away.
It was a powerful reminder of the capacity of an ordinary person to be a hero in the face of an extreme situation. And United 93 brought with it a huge jumble of emotions, but aside from everything else, it brought back that same feeling of pride mixed with terror as that picture evoked. Pride that ordinary people could be so brave, and terror that unlike the movies or the comic books, their story did not have a happy ending even if their heroism did help to save the day.
That is the power of the movie - it so perfectly captures the everyday experience of flying on a plane - it puts you right there. The camera captures the little details, it notices the little quirks, that you yourself might notice when at an airport. The guy next to you is dressed well. The girl across from you is really immersed in her music. That elderly couple looks stressed out, that one guy is talking too loudly. By the time flight 93 took off into the air in the movie, I literally felt like I had just taken off with it - I even had the slight queesiness in my stomach from liftoff and eveything. That's how immersive this movie is -- it really is amazing.
A similar feeling of immersion occurs when the film focuses on the crew at the FAA or in the military. Everything feels so real, every detail is so natural, that you begin to imagine yourself at your own workplace, and then you transplant that experience into the movie. You see yourself working at the FAA - how would YOU react to the news that plane was possibly hijacked? How would you react to the news of the World Trade Center collapsing? How DID you react? This movie forces you to transplant your own experiences into the movie due to its naturalism, and that is why it is so effective. The lack of name actors is a huge asset to achieving this immersion, as is the inclusion of actual people playing themselves in key roles rather than using actors. There is chaos, confusion, overlapping dialogue, messiness - the way people look, talk, act - it's all natural seeming, no hint of hair stylists or makeup people or the like. It really is a complete 360 from what you've come to expect from a movie, especially one of this magnitude.
And man, Paul Greengrass is just awesome. I had never seen a Paul Greengrass movie before this one, but I had followed his career a bit due to his involvement in the Watchmen movie that now won't happen with him as the director. After seeing this, I would love to see Greengrass tackle Watchmen, not because he shows anything in particular here that would translate into that movie, except maybe for a keen eye for little details. But from this point on I will have a vested interest in anything this guy does, because his direction here is simply astounding. The tension this movie creates is almost nauseating in its power, if that makes sense. The movie is utterly naturalistic, and yet the way Greengrass shifts from scene to scene, from plot point to plot point, the way he contrasts the ordinary realities of day-in-the-life minutae with the extradordinary, ripped-from-the-movies unreality of 9-11 - well it is almost too much to take at times. This movie will make you want to leave your seat at times - to get up and yell at the FAA officials to get with the program and realize the magnitude of the threat. You'll almostbe hoping against hope that the day will be saved, that the inevitable tragedy will somehow be avoided with a touch of Hollywood magic. You'll wish that Jack Bauer or Superman or your hero of choice would magically insert themselves into the reality of this movie and bend the rules to conform to the typical hero-saves-the-day-at-all-costs expectations we have of a typical Hollywood drama. Watching this movie though, you are forced to ride this ride that has one inevitable ending - it really is like watching a nightmare play out, a nightmare that you know the ending to that you can't change no matter how hard you try.
When the passengers on the plane finally decide to unite to take down the terrorists, everything to that point has been played so realistically that the ensuing chaos is like no other "action" scene you've ever seen. By that point you've been put on the plane - you're one of the passengers, and you're sitting there thinking about how you're going to attack this knife-wielding hijacker without getting stabbed in the gut.
And I think that that is why this movie is not too soon. That may not be true for other 9/11 movies, but United 93 is a poignant, wrenching reminder of the true terror of that day. It's the oppossite of escapism, which really is quite jarring. Even a fact-based movie like Munich had enough cinematic flair to provide a certain wall between the viewer and the action on screen. Paul Greengrass shatters that wall. And it's funny how all of a sudden, a MOVIE of all things becomes a more shocking reality check than what we encounter in actual life. In a culture where we quickly in a mtter of years try to pretend we're NOT living in a world filled with terorrists and murderers and that we're NOt still reeling from the unprecedented attack against our country and ideals on 9/11, this is a necessary reality check. Sure, some people don't need it. Some don't want it. But for me this was a valuable reminder that this isn't the same world as is depicted in the early part of United 93. We pretend to be, but we're not as innocent anymore. Osama is still out there. Iran has nuclear weapons and talks of destroying Israel. Thousands have lost their lives in a bleak war in Iraq. Our patriotism has turned to cynicism, and maybe rightfully so. But here is a movie with no real politics, no real agenda, except to simply remind us of what happened. And I think I and a lot of others needed that, needed to be taken back momentarily to a time when we were shocked into reality by the events around us. Well, prepare to be shocked again.
And one other thing -- I know that we don't know exactly what happened on that plane. The 9-11 Commision report is sketchy, and yes, there is the contingent who believes that the plane was actually shot down by our government rather than grounded by the heroics of the passengers onboard. Well, all that is debatable, and I don't give much credence to most 9-11 conspiracies, as most of what happened on that day is fairly well-documented. But I think that it's not really important in the context of this movie - it's not a documentary, it has the right to take some artistic license when necessary. And while i don't know exactly how each passenger on the flight 93 actually reacted during the flight, I want to believe that the narrative of this movie is close to the truth. Because there's a huge power in that. That these were ordinary people, forced to go into fight or flight mode, forced to kick into survival mode. And Greengrass puts us there, so that one passengers' squint of the eyes, one guy's look of determination, one man's decision to play the odds and make a go for it, the sheer desire to fight in the face of death itself -- wow, that's powerful stuff there. I think in those passengers' determination is the embodiment of what everyone felt on 9-11 - we can't just sit around anymore, we have to DO something.
So I know that there are those too cynical and fed up with Hollwood's tendency for sensationalism to give this movie a chance. And more importantly I know there are some who will not want to subject themselves to the sheer brutality and realism and immersiveness of it all. But if you can stomach it, I really do recommend United 93. It's an amazing movie. It latches on to your subconciousness and says there. It is life-changing, mind-altering cinema. If it hadn't been this good, it would have been a creative failure, and yes, it likely would have been too soon - but it is really that good and that powerful and that well done that the movie is an unquestionable artistic milestone, and I have to commend those involved for doing right by this difficult subject matter.
My grade: A
