A black hole
United 93 (2006)
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Reviews Counted:198
Fresh:179
Rotten:19
Average Rating:8.2/10
Consensus: Potent and sobering, United 93 is even more gut-wrenching because the outcome is already known. While difficult to watch, director Paul Greengrass' film has been made with skill and treats the subject matter with respect, never resorting to the aggrandizement of which Hollywood has sometimes been accused. Especially effective is the cast of mostly unknown actors, who portray the passengers of the doomed flight as ordinary people who respond with bravery to extraordinary circumstances.
Rated: R [See Full Rating] for language, and some intense sequences of terror and violence.
Runtime: 1 hr 51 mins
Genre: Dramas
Theatrical Release:Apr 28, 2006 Wide
Box Office: $31,471,430
Synopsis: UNITED 93, director Paul Greengrass's meticulous reconstruction of the events surrounding the crash--the result of a heroic struggle between the passengers and hijackers--of the fourth plane to be... UNITED 93, director Paul Greengrass's meticulous reconstruction of the events surrounding the crash--the result of a heroic struggle between the passengers and hijackers--of the fourth plane to be hijacked on September 11, 2001, is a landmark in filmmaking. Greengrass has chosen the most politically and emotionally charged source material available to an artist in the early 21st century, and shaped it into a psychologically draining, terrifyingly real, and technically brilliant film. Like his first feature-length work, BLOODY SUNDAY, UNITED 93 doesn't follow a traditional cinematic narrative structure; via hand-held cameras, grainy DV stock, and frenetic editing, it instead presents a visceral (at times sickening) in-the-moment documentary-style experience that maximizes the film's unavoidable air of tension and dread without being crassly manipulative. Yet for all of its precision and craft, UNITED 93 still depicts one of the most terrifying ordeals the United States has ever had to face--and that it was released less than five years after those events took place plays an undeniably enormous role in how the film is received. It is impossible to watch UNITED 93 and not be profoundly moved, whether that emotion is fear, sadness, anxiety, or pure rage. And it is an emotional catharsis far removed from what is the filmmaker's delicate hand and deft touch. Greengrass, though, is quite fearless in his depiction of the chaos of the day--the President is frustratingly missing; the FAC, NORAD, and local air-traffic control centers are shown in a disoriented panic; and the terrorists are brutal and remorseless--and, to his credit, he avoids soft-pedaling any political agenda and doesn't blindly canonize the flight's passengers. Rather, their heroism is treated as the product of a logical decision made by ordinary men and women who found themselves in the most extraordinary and illogical of situations. And that, ultimately, is where the power of UNITED 93 lies. [More]
Starring: Lewis Alsamari, J. J. Johnson, Gary Commock, Trish Gates
Starring: Lewis Alsamari, J. J. Johnson, Gary Commock, Trish Gates, Polly Adams, Cheyenne Jackson, Opal Alladin, Starla Benford, Nancy McDoniel
Director: Paul Greengrass
Director: Paul Greengrass
Screenwriter: Paul Greengrass
Composer: John Powell
Screenwriter: Paul Greengrass
Studio: Universal Pictures
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Reviews for United 93
This is not a film you go to for enjoyment, but because you have a duty to endure it.
a real-time reconstruction of events on the doomed flight that manages to encapsulate all the anxieties and sorrows of our age.
I can say that United 93 has been done well -- with intelligence, compassion, efficiency -- and yet still question whether it was worth doing.
Amazingly detailed in its narrative cohesion and editing, United 93 is a noble tribute to the tragedy of 9/11.
Greengrass recreates the attacks on the World Trade Center utilizing existing news footage and it still retains the horror of that day. Despite knowing the ultimate outcome of this film, UNITED 93 is a harrowing and important film.
Unlike 'World Trade Center,' this harrowing chronicle has scarcely a hint of Hollywood. ...'United 93'... thrusts itself into the heart of the action, whether you're ready to go there or not.
Greengrass takes pains to keep events believable and relatively unrhetorical, rejecting entertainment for the sake of sober reflection, though one has to ask how edifying this is apart from its reduction of the standard myths.
...a story about the resolve of a group of strangers that banded together in the most difficult of times to do what they knew in their hearts was right.
In a way, the film is a memorial. It honors the passengers who fought back by visualizing their experience and imprinting it on our screens for years to come.
Un tenso y atrapante relato que imagina, con un realismo casi documental, lo que pudo haber sucedido a bordo del fatídico vuelo.
Impossible to recommend as a great Friday night out, yet agonisingly vital as thought-urging cinema.
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