United 93 Review
I just got back from watching the powerful United 93 movie that reenacts the fateful events of September 11, 2001 based around the people on United Flight 93 that crashed near Shanksville, Pennsylvania after the passengers fought against the hijackers and prevented the plane from hitting it’s designated target which is believed to be the US Capitol building. This was actually the first time I went to a movie theater where policemen were positioned around the theater. Viewers will leave the theater feeling angry at the terrorists but not enough to cause trouble in the theater as I am presuming was the reason police were at the movie.
The movie opens up showing the actions of the people on United 93 arriving at the airport and the crew of the plane beginning preparations for the flight that day. The actors that play the roles of all these people all seem so normal. There are no larger than life Sylvester Stallones or Brad Pitts in this movie, just normal people doing normal every day things. This movie really brought the life the fact that real people died that day. To often people look at the victims of 9/11 as just some distant statistic, much like US military casualties in Iraq are used as a statistic to justify one’s political leanings, while ignoring the fact real people died to make that statistic.
The face most Americans remember from the hijackers was that of Mohamed Atta, but besides that very little was known about them. This movie gives the terrorists a face and it was quite scary. These 9/11 terrorists were scarier than any Taliban fighter because they look like you or me. The movie further brings the terrorists to live by showing them washing and praying in the hotel and than arriving and checking in through security at the airport before carrying out their mission.
The movie also simultaneously shows in tragic detail the bureaucratic confusion that was gripping the FAA and the US Air Force at the time. The FAA personnel much like the flight 93 passengers were also very well portrayed as just normal people going about their day when the hijackings happened. People will leave this movie shaking their heads at how little prepared both the FAA and the Air Force were to handle anything like 9/11. Initially FAA managers would not believe any planes had been hijacked. When they finally realized the planes had in fact been hijacked, no one was willing to make a decision about whether to scramble fighter planes and when they finally did get the planes airborne no one could decide whether to shoot down the hijacked planes or not. Everyone ended up waiting for the President to make a decision, but by the time the decision to shoot down the hijacked aircraft was made the planes had already hit their targets. The authorities were doing everything they could, but there was just no governmental system in place to deal with what was going on. One leaves the movie hoping that these bureaurcratic and systematic problems have been corrected by now.
The portrayal of the actions before the crash of flight 93 is really eye opening and heartbreaking at the same time. When the hijackers first sprung into action they just stabbed random people in the first class section and the rest of the first class passengers ran back to the economy section of the plane where two hijackers kept the passengers detained by one of the terrorists posing as having a bomb. The other two hijackers break into the cockpit by holding a knife to a flight attendants neck. Once the pilots opened the door the two terrorists immediately attacked and killed the pilots and seized control of the plane.
One of the most sickening portions of the movie was when after they killed the pilots and took control of the plane one of the terrorists tells the other that the flight attendant is needed anymore and he then says an Islamic prayer while the woman is pleading for her life and then sacrifices her to Allah by ripping out her throat with the knife. That is probably the scene I will remember more than any other in the movie because it shows who these people really are. Since September 11th Americans have become so desensitized to who the terrorists really are, with all the “Islam is the religion of peace” talk and America is the real villains in the War on Terror. That scene just shows that we are fighting a war against religious fanatics that no matter how much you want to appease and plead for peace with them they will still rip out your throat.
At the back of the plane the passengers begin placing calls on the airphones to their families. Hearing the reenactment of those phone calls is truly heartbreaking to listen to. Through these phone calls the passengers learned of the planes that flew into the World Trade Center buildings and the Pentagon. The passengers now know this is a suicide mission and decide to gather weapons to attack the terrorists with. The passenger led by Todd Beamer and Mark Bingham spring their attack and subdue the two terrorists in the back of the plane and then they did something I didn’t even know, they actually did break into the cockpit. They busted open the cockpit door and were fighting with the two terrorists inside the airplane for control of the plane before it crashed. These passengers were truly heroes and should rightfully be remembered as so.
The director of the movie Paul Greengrass did an excellent job in creating this movie. I think the fact that he is British helped because a Hollywood director would have politicized the movie which would have been a shame. Greengrass in great detail stuck to recreating the events that day by using the airport security camera footage, cockpit voice recordings, and the passengers phone calls during the hijacking. Sticking to the facts is powerful enough and doesn’t need a political message attached to it.
These same terrorists from flight 93 are the same Zarquawi terrorists randomly blowing up and killing civilians and children in Iraq right now. It is important that people don’t forget this. There is only one way to deal with them and that is to kill them before they rip out your throat. After watching the movie you feel September 11th all over again. Just like watching Saving Private Ryan was not good for some World War II vets this movie may not be good for those with personal connections to 9/11. However, for everyone else this movie will remind people of the fact that we are fighting religious extremists bent on killing us and like the passengers on United 93, we are the good guys and never forget it.
