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Pretty Good

Excellent but underrated film

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

Knowing the outcome does not help ease the tension one experiences while watching this movie. I've waited a long time before seeing this film since one's senses were inundated on that infamous day, with ubiquitous follow-ups and documentaries to capture the horror of 9/11. Besides confirming the heroic actions of a handful of airline passengers who decided to take fate into their own hands, one will come away with an appreciation for the tough job air traffic controllers have in maintaining order in the skies. I don't know if it still holds, but at one time, air traffic controllers held an unenviable first place for suicide rates among all occupations. The unbelievable stress these folks must have experienced that day was palpable on the screen. I particularly appreciated the way the principal aviation officer took control and made decisions that were correctly concerned with saving lives rather than worry about the business aspect of shutting down flights as a result of the chaos resulting from the Twin Towers being struck. What's personally troubling to me is how some of the reviews on this board disparage the real heroes of that day and how so many are quick to accept a government conspiracy behind the downing of the Twin Towers by our own government. Yeah, I've heard them too and they reek of unbridled nonsense. Aside from the 12/7/1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, there's no personification of evil greater than the cowardly act of those terrorists on 9/11/2001, a day of infamy that Americans should never forget.

United 93 tells the true story of a plane that was hijacked on September 11th 2001 and the passengers on-board the plane fighting back against the terrorists in order to foil their plans...Given that the majority of the media focus at the time was on the planes that actually crashed into the Twin Towers, this harrowing true story is one that people may have forgotten about or overlooked. Having watched the film, it's not an experience that I'm likely to forget and I'm more than willing to commend the bravery of the passengers for their actions on that fateful morning. However, as a piece of cinema I didn't find United 93 to be entirely satisfying...The film is apparently shot in real-time and presumably Greengrass has done this to make the film feel more realistic and to perhaps draw the audience into the events as they happen. I think part of the problem with this film is that Greengrass has gone a little overboard with finer details - there is about a 30 minute build-up showing people waiting at the airport, waiting to board the plane etc and it's probably past the half hour mark before the plane even takes off. I'm sure in his mind that Greengrass did this perhaps as a way of building suspense, but I just found it a little tedious and unnecessary. Also as the film is called United 93 I did expect the film to focus pretty much all of its attention on that flight. However, on various occasions the film cuts back to various air-traffic control centres with varying threats or actual hijackings taking place. There's nothing wrong with any of this per se, but it does make the film feel a little cluttered and unfocused at times - it's like Greengrass couldn't decide whether to make a documentary about the events of 9/11 or a film about the bravery of the passengers on-board flight UA 93. By trying to do both, the film. feels padded and far longer than it needs to be. However, once you get past the hour mark, Greengrass does crank up the tension and in the last 20 minutes or so I literally could not take my eyes off the screen. I would still recommend watching this film, but do feel that with a shorter running time and slightly better focus that I may have enjoyed it more than I did.

Greetings from Lithuania."United 93" (2006) isn't my favorite picture by a mile. But this is probably the ONLY movie in my lifetime which left me speechless, for like literally 10 minutes after credits start rolling. Words can not express for devastating, vulnerable, angry i felt after first few minutes when this movie ended. I can not recall when a movie took me so hard, delivered me to the place and left me experiencing events so purely like "United 93" did. It is not a movie where you can identify with someone - you are just a viewer, seeing things from outside - in the beginning (because the whole picture is shoot in almost documentary style). After some time, you won't be feeling yourself as a viewer - you will be in there, with theme, at the time, EXPERIENCING everything. Strange, but i didn't felt like i was seeing good guys and / or vs. the bad guys (although they are the worst what planet Earth could produce in it's lifetime - that is my opinion). That is because of the brilliant and one of the kind to say the least directing and screenplay by Paul Greengrass - for this movie he should be remembered forever (calm down - no one will ever forget "Bloody Sunday" or even "The Bourne Ultimatum" - but i do not want to even hint on title "Born" in with the movie like "United 93", which is a most powerful tribute, probably, ever). Overall, if you are human being with emotions and comprehension - "United 93" is something to be witness by yourself. Don't be shine to be devastated by it - it is how a human nature should be responding to it. And to all of you who hated it and called it propaganda and etc. - i feel sorry for you - this masterpiece isn't for you, although it should have been... as we are all human.

Dramatisations of real-life events often fail because filmmakers somehow feel compelled to embellish the story and to add unnecessary characters, cinematic clichés or simply more context than needed. And in the process they tend to lose sight of what made the material worthy of bringing to the screen in the first place.This is not the case here. Paul Greengrass's films always have cinematic scope, they never feel like cheap, made-for-TV pieces, yet he has a real knack for that stripped-down, documentary feel that really makes a movie like this work. He has proved it many times with excellent films like Bloody Sunday or Captain Phillips, and the same goes for United 93, as well. The beginning of the movie is truly amazing. Greengrass uses similar techniques here as in Captain Phillips (reminiscent of what Spielberg did in the opening scenes of Munich), building almost unbearable tension with simply presenting the flow of everyday life, people preparing for their journey at the airport. It's all in the sounds and the effective editing. No dialogue here, no 'movie drama', only the suffocating atmosphere, the sense of a tragedy coming.United 93 never loses focus, and never wants to aggravate things. And by simply telling the gut-wrenching, tragic story life wrote, it truly honours the brave heroes and the memory of the victims.