Posted on 04/28/2006 1:21:50 PM PDT by RobFromGa
Just saw United 93-- I thought it was excellent. It evolves in real-time and its cuts back and forth between the Air Traffic controllers, the Military room, and the plane.
It was somewhat shocking to watch the level of confusion in terms of what was going on, but when you see what information that they were dealing with, it makes sense.
The hijackers to me came across more as fanatical than evil, and they were not turban-wearing obvious characters, they were cleaned up and I ride on planes with people like them on every flight I take.
In the movie, they are carrying out the plans of others and are obsessive in their task. We are not fighting an enemy that is likely to be reasoned with.
There is one character that I'm glad they included- he has a European *maybe French* accent and he makes a number of comments along the lines of "If we do what they say, they'll spare our lives"-- typical appeasement mentality.
Thanks to this group of heroes, many thousands of lives may have been spared and we kept the Islamic nuts from claiming the Capitol or White House as a prize.
I give in 9.5/10!
The hijackers are portrayed as, first and foremost, Muslims. They pray constantly. The movie begins with a voice-over of the lead hijacker praying in Arabic, reading from the Koran, and a fly-over of New York City at night while his voice continues. There is absolutely no question about which ideology the hijackers were following.
In the film's only instance of nudity, one of the hijackers is seen in his hotel bathroom shaving his pubic area (the shot is from behind, but it's clear enough what he's doing). The scene is kind of strange if you don't know anything about Islam, but a quick trip to The Imam tells us that Muslims are required to keep themselves shorn down there. So if any of you were puzzled by that scene, you now know why he was doing it: it's a Muslim thing.
The United 93 hijackers are the only hijackers shown. For reference purposes, they were Ziad Jarrah (the suicide pilot, with the glasses), Saeed al-Ghamdi (the older guy with the red bandana, who was apparently operating as the suicide co-pilot), Ahmed al-Nami (the young guy with the red bandana), and Ahmed al-Haznawi (the guy with the bomb).
The confusion on the ground is simply the result of no one expecting what the terrorists had in mind. Hijacked planes do not, by and large, end up as suicide missiles. The standard operating procedure for a hijacking, pre-9/11, was to get the plane on the ground, negotiate as many hostages off of the plane as possible, and ultimately resolve the situation with the hijackers dead or in custody, and all of the passengers safely off the plane. When the various ground control agencies figured out that there were hijackings in progress, they were waiting for demand lists, not suicide dives.
To this end, passengers on hijacked planes pre-9/11 were supposed to sit quietly, not get themselves killed, and let the professionals do their jobs. The European appeaser guy (whose name I cannot, for the life of me, figure out) was doing precisely what he was supposed to do before the passengers found out that that they were not hostages and that they were, in fact, merely passengers on a missile. But after it became clear to the passengers of United 93 that they would not survive if they did not take action, Appeaser Guy was simply hoping against all rational hope. Chalk it up to denial or whatever you want, but he seemed to have trouble believing that he was actually in the situation that he was in, and this is what prompted him to make his mind-bendingly foolish decision to attempt to alert the hijackers of the plot that the rest of the passengers had in mind. He was hoping that the crocodile would eat him last.
The passengers are, by and large, anonymous. Their names are not mentioned on-screen. You have to figure out who they are from context. The guy with the baseball cap is Mark Bingham; Todd "let's roll" Beamer is so ordinary-looking that I actually had no idea who was playing him until I checked IMDB. This is intentional. The passengers on United 93 were not a bunch of highly trained Jack Bauers, Chuck Norrises, and Vic Mackeys. They were ordinary people who found themselves in an extraordinary situation.
In order to give a portrayal of what happened, Greengrass had to make a few assumptions and even put in some flat-out inaccurate stuff. For example, the passgengers did not make it into the cockpit, according to the 9/11 report. Once the hijackers realized that the passengers would get to them and take over the plane before they reached their target (which appears, by the picture that Jarrah attaches to the wheel of the plane, to be the Capitol Building), they crashed the plane.
There's also some speculation over whether Jarrah was actually involved in the attack. It is known that he was on the plane, but there is some circumstancial evidence throwing his status as a hijacker into question.
Finally, although al-Haznawi is shown with the bomb, nobody really knows which one of the hijackers had it.
The last ten minutes of the film are extremely intense, especially after the passengers break into the cockpit. You'll find yourself hoping against what you know to be inevitable; you know that everyone on board this plane is going to die, but you are caught up in the urgency that grips the passengers as they try to pull the plane out of its suicide dive.
*SPOILER ALERT*
There is no crash, no bang as the plane hits the ground. Soft music plays just under the screams of the passengers. The film ends with the ground spinning closer and closer to the nose of the plane, and then everything just goes black, with the music continuing.
*END SPOILERS*
I find the R-rating kind of strange (and I understand that the producers intend to appeal the rating). There is some violence, mostly stabbing, and CNN footage of the World Trade Center, as well as the second plane hitting, is shown, as well as the Pentagon burning. A few F-bombs get dropped, mostly by the people on the ground who are trying to figure out what is going on. But compared to, say, Pulp Fiction, the film is extremely mild in terms of flat-out graphic violence and such. Most of the violence is implied.
Prepare for an incredibly intense retelling of the story of September 11th. Bring tissues, and consider getting a drink afterwards.
I think your right.
The review was actually very positive. The reviewers on unpluggedonline.com, which is where this review actually comes from, break down every single cinema release this way. In the past, it actually saved me from taking my children to a movie advertised as "fun for the whole family" that was truly inappropriate for elementary-aged children. I was so glad to have that site.
I posted just that portion of the total review, as a few posters had questioned if there was profanity in the movie. It is rated R and that generally goes with the territory.
I DID notice the language as we do not use it in our house, and it always makes me flinch (especially the JCs). I guess I am a prude that way (wasn't always, though). I didn't think the profanity in this; however, was used to shock, for gratuitous purposes, or to sound "cool". I think the cursing, considering the circumstances is pretty realistic. Especially the folks at NORAD. I was thinking it would be worse, actually.
I am not a potty-mouth (anymore--there was a time...), but as I said before, I have no IDEA if I would keep my composure in the same situation presented in the movie. I am guessing--probably not. I am a flawed human being.
I don't think the language would keep me from taking my teenagers to this very important film, but I would explain that in extreme circumstances we ought to extend the grace that is allowed to us, to our fellow man. And then I would go on to say that, just because I am letting you see this film, profanity and all, does NOT give YOU license to repeat any of these words.
Here's the boxofficemojo.com link is anyone is interested.
United 93 is now second at the box office and if I read the results correctly is #1 in receipts per theater. Looks like the libs lose again in trying to keep the story from being told.
LOL..you win, I surrender! :D
And I don't think you're a prude for objecting to the Lord's name in vain.
It hurts to hear His name used this way...
..but I too would explain to my teens about the circumstances and that it isn't gratuitous and thrown in for effect.
I appreciate your comments.
A ritual of some sort?
Compared to King Kong which got a PG-13 and in which a person is eaten head first by a giant worm-like creature in slow motion and closeups, U93 was not particularly gory or violent.
But it is a true story and that 10x's the emotional impact. Not that they should be able to take that into account though in their ratings, it is too subjective.
Putting on my tin foil hat, I'd think they want to scare people away and keep teenagers out with the rating. With the FAA guy commenting that he doesn't swear but they asked him to swear, this seems like a strange thing to me.
..but as Shelayne just explained, Dobson's overall review was positive, as I suspected it would be.
In an interview with Mark Bingham's mother, she said that listening to the original cockpit recordings, she thinks that it is very possible that they had breached the cockpit door. She said that you can hear the voices of the passengers, as well as the terrorists in the cockpit. Maybe it is just hopeful speculation on her part. I don't know.
Thanks for all your information. Very interesting and great synopsis. It really brought you back to the pre 9-11 world, didn't it?
I’ve slept on it and thought about it and here’s my review of United 93. Fair warning: it’s not glowing. Although I do think you should go see it and draw your own conclusions.
First, the particulars abut the audience and the emotional reaction. I saw the late show last night. The theater was about half full. Most of the audience was 20-30 years old with few over the age of 40. I think that was simply a reflection of the hour when the movie was shown.
As other posters have noted, the audience’s reaction at the end of the movie was utter silence. Many people sniffling and obviously impacted by what they saw. People paused then left the theatre. Many stayed to see some of the credits, although I think I was the only one to sit through them in their entirety.
As for my own reaction. In truth, I didn’t have much of one. I had read this thread prior to going. I also prayed the Efke throughout the movie (see my tagline). Praying the Efke allowed a good deal of emotional detachment, for which I was very thankful. The idea of having my heart ripped out at the cineplex didn’t appeal to me much.
From an artistic point of view I thought that the film was quite good. It’s austerity and grittiness was remarkable and very well played. The editing was absolutely fantastic, and should receive awards as a result. I was impressed by the decision to use relative unknowns for the acting talent. It forced you to focus on the subject matter and the storyline, not the actors and actresses. In general, the acting was good, but it wasn’t what drew me in. It was the editing and the storyline.
There was a great deal of subtlety in this movie, and I believe this is one that you’ll need to see a few times to catch all of it. My favorite scene was actually very early on in the film where the murderers are preparing to leave the hotel. A very short scene shows one of the murderers shaving off his body hair. You have to ask yourself; what kind of lunatic cult would require it’s adherents to shave off their pubic hair as a pre-requisite to “martyrdom?” But I guess we already know the answer to that.
What I didn’t like about the movie was the sense of moral equivalency between the murderers and the victims that seemed to permeate the film. I will acknowledge that I have a particular sensitivity to this because I rarely watch television, and am not exposed to it as frequently. But I digress…
One area where I think the movie could have been better is in further developing the preparation of the murderers for the flight. Why were they there? How did they prepare for this? What was the nature of the fanaticism that would drive them to want to butcher thousands of innocents? Those questions were left unanswered by the film. Instead you got the sense that the murderers were plopped down in the middle of a sort of existentialist play where they had no control over events as they unfolded.
The truth is that the murderers on United 93 were in absolute control of the situation from the time they got onto the plane until shortly before the plane ended up in a Pennsylvania cornfield.
The Director had the opportunity to take a strong moral stand here in showing that this wasn’t some morally neutral event, but a Slaughter of the Innocents. He blew the opportunity. There were subtle moral hints throughout, such as the opposing use of prayer on the part of the murderers and the passengers, but by and large the movie wasn’t going to take a moral stance. Given the moral clarity of the subject matter, I found that disturbing. Sometimes 2+2 really does equal 4.
I also wasn’t completely thrilled about the portrayal of the passengers. While it was probably accurate, it was not very flattering. To cut to the chase, I have some concern about how this movie is going to play in the mid-east. While most Americans and westerners seeing this film would view the portrayal of the passengers sympathetically, I think that the point of view elsewhere is going to be that the passengers were weak. How much of the film showed the passengers cringing behind their chairs, crying and doing not much of anything about the situation? Only in the last few minutes of the film is there a consensus that the murderers must be resisted. I recognize that there’s a good chance that this is exactly the way it played out in reality. As has been pointed out already, the director had a significant amount of artistic license. I think he could have used that license to portray the passengers a bit more nobly and as acting a bit more assertively earlier on in the drama.
All in all, a good film. I’d give it a 9.5 out of 10 but for the moral equivalency issues. So put me down for 6.5/10.
This is an important movie: go see it and draw your own conclusions.
(And now if you'll pardon me, I'm going to go slip on my asbestos undergarments)
Not really. It's more of a cleanliness thing. They see body hair as dirty and shave it off. There is no particular ritual involved in removing the hair; it's just routine grooming.
Yeah, as Greengrass himself said in an interview with Rush, the passengers on United 93 were the first people to find themselves in the post-9/11 world. They acted accordingly.
"So if any of you were puzzled by that scene, you now know why he was doing it: it's a Muslim thing."
I guess I wasn't the only one to notice that scene. My review is a few posts down.
See 641 and replies. It's not a martyrdom thing, it's a grooming thing. All Muslims do it.
Heh. And I responded to that part of your post before I saw this one. : )
Thank you for your kind words, and God bless you as well.
Both groups realized that the feces were heading towards the fan, and they were both praying their hearts out to their respective gods for strength. Those hijackers were religious, that much can't be denied. Greengrass did not want the viewers to forget the driving force behind what the hijackers were doing, and he wanted to show where the courage to resist them came from.
It goes back more to portraying those hijackers as Muslims more than anything else.
Hey..I apologize for my words about Dobson...just wanna let ya know that.
thanks for the ping.
I attended the 1:20 showing here by myself earlier this afternoon, a well done film imo. By the time it ended, I had forgotten there were other people in the theater with me.
a few side notes: they did play about 10 minutes of previews for other films, the audience was absolutely silent throughout the movie, and several other folks stayed until the credits ended.
You do not need to apologize to me. I took no offense. I understand where you are coming from. ;^)
Thank you for being so condiderate. It is a quality much too rare these days.
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