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This is a unique movie, provoking emotional responses and feelings I have never previously experienced watching a movie. The subject matter of United 93 is visceral as it deals with an issue that has become part of our daily lives.

To put my experience in perspective I am a native New York City resident who witnessed the massacre on 9/11 with my own eyes, from right after the first impact to the final collapse of the Twin Towers.

I saw United 93 at a Saturday night 11 pm showing in the same Upper West Side movie complex from where the controversy over the film’s trailer originated. It’s also a theater where I saw V for Vendetta and was sickened by the audience clapping. The theater was almost full which surprised me for a Saturday 11pm showing, but not unheard of. The crowd looked like a typical movie crowd, maybe less thuggish than you might find at an action flick. I saw lots of couples, some singles, and many groups of 3 or more. All races, but predominantly a white crowd of young to middle aged moviegoers.

This was brilliantly and beautifully filmed. I have read many reviews that say it’s filmed like a documentary, but it did not have that feel at all. I suspect it was shot on digital film which gives the film a grainy realistic quality that captures light in an eerie halo like effect. It’s not surreal, but hyper-realistic without looking live.

The timeline is real time, beginning with the hijackers preparing for the flight in their hotel room, through boarding and flight preps. The introductory scenes effectively weave together all the players that will soon dominate the movie. The major players are the passengers, hijackers, aircraft controllers, FAA traffic control, and military air defense.

Tension is piled on from the very beginning. The scenes of the copilot walking the aircraft and something as simple as latching the aircraft door shut each project their own sense of gritty reality and portend the disaster to come. We all know the story, but you want to scream out to the passengers and pilots that something is very very wrong.

The Boeing 767 itself becomes a character as we see all it’s rivets, controls, paint chips and sheer size of the aircraft shot in a level of detail that is rarely done in films with aircraft. It’s real, and it’s a tremendous aircraft.

The incredible but very understandable confusion and the vast number of characters involved in trying to comprehend and get control of the day, dominates the middle chapter of the movie. As the hijacking begin on the other flights the tension ratchets up immediately. First, from disbelief that there could be a hijacking, the first in 40 years according to controllers. The controller who hears Mohammed Atta’s voice is sure right away something is very, very wrong.

Attacking the WTC is accomplished using mainly stock CNN footage, but there is a very effective shot of the 2nd WTC impact from the vantage point of the Newark Airport control tower. Shock and the understanding of the meaning of a second impact is universal on everyone.

The actual hijacking scene is not graphic, but implied. There is blood but its not overly gory, likely what happened on the plane. The hijackers are brutal, calculating, but imperfect. They make mistakes, and those mistakes provide the opportunity for the passengers to retake control of the plane.

Your mind will race with imagination about what is happening on the other hijacked planes.

The casting is superb. The characters are entirely believable with unknown faces playing everyday Americans. Not only are the actors able to portray the grief of the passengers convincingly, they are physically appropriate. Jeremy Glick (I think) clenching his hand into a muscular claw almost gasping, “I’m going to break his arm” , as he describes how he wants to disarm one of the terrorists, struck me as an incredible moment in the film. The terrorists are physically thin and far less imposing than you might imagine, especially the ‘muscle’ hijackers. One hijacker is a short thin young man who appears to be in college.

I find it interesting that the control of the airplane was held for as long as it did by these two hijackers. If the flight had taken off on time or the hijackers had struck earlier, the plane may have hit the Capitol Building. Once the passengers decided not to be sheep, and try to save themselves and those on the ground, the terrorists themselves become terrorized. And it’s a good thing.

The last portion of the scene moves very quickly. From the time passengers hear from their families that the WTC has been attacked, and then the Pentagon, it’s clear to them it’s a suicide mission. The rebellion happens swiftly, and brazenly. There is one ‘we can negotiate with them, if we stay quiet we’ll get out of this’ euroweenie. He is eventually attacked by the passengers. The terrorists go within 5 minutes from controlling the plane, to becoming the prey of the passengers. The tension is incredible from both sides. I want to make it clear the terrorists were not shown in a sympathetic manner, but there was no sympathy shown to them by the passengers. The terrorists are in deep sh*t and they know it.

The rebellion is realistically filmed, gritty, terrifying, swift and brutal. I can’t effectively put it into words, you just have to see it.

The camera shakes, quick pans and more shaking. Screams, chanting, warning alarms going off. Shots of control dials showing the aircraft inverted. A scream “ I don’t have it!” Cockpit views of the Earth below dipping, pitching and rolling ever closer. Passenger shots in their seats screaming and clutching their seats as the aircraft dives and shakes.

The final shot, out the window, the ground rushes up, closer and closer until you fly into the grass field of the Pennsylvania field.

Then the screen goes black.

The movie theater is dead silent except for the sound of many women crying and sobbing out loud in the audience. Myself? As soon as the screen goes black I feel something. I am not sure what it was, as I have never felt that before in a movie. It’s not anger, or sadness, but perhaps that the relief from the tension and pressure has come. I put my head in my hands and cannot bear to read the text that follows for the next minute on the screen.

I heard the Fox new movie reviewer describe the intensity as ten times the opening d-Day landing scene in Saving Private Ryan. I don’t know if I agree with that comparison as they are such different movies. I agree that the logarithmic buildup of tension and visceral emotion can be described this way. In fact the physical reaction and feelings I experienced were far more intense and sustained than watching the battle scenes in Saving Private Ryan. Again, United 93 is a unique movie, like nothing I have ever seen before.

This is a tough movie to watch but I am better for watching it. In the days after 9/11 I suffered from nightmares. I fell asleep normally last night, after a stiff drink, but there is something cathartic about this movie. Maybe it’s the first accurate realistic understanding of what happened that day in September. I expect any other 9/11 movies to be garbage when compared to this. This film also makes all of the United 93 TV portrayals already shown look like a kindergarten play.

It will be a crime if this movie does not win Best Picture at the Oscars.