Stevecorp
Don't listen to the negative reviews
Dynamixor
The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.
Mandeep Tyson
The acting in this movie is really good.
Scott Amundsen
This is a simple, powerful, and uncomfortably in-your-face docudrama about what it might have been like to be aboard United Airlines flight 93. The only one of the four hijacked jets to fail to hit its intended target, UA 93 crashed in a field in Shanksville PA because of the actions of a group of passengers and crew who attempted, unfortunately without success, to take back the plane from the hijackers.Their heroism caused the plane to crash nose first into the ground. They sacrificed themselves because there was nothing else to be done.I was chilled to the bone by this film. It is stark, uncompromising, and to its credit, it does not try to portray the hijackers as subhuman or the passengers as mere victims. Every member of the cast comes across as a complete and fully fleshed out human being.Not for the squeamish, but it is of great historical importance.
cinemajesty
Movie Review: "United 93" (2006)Director Paul Greengrass, who takes a particularly-researched, originally-written script on the 9/11-hijacked passenger airplanes after departing from the U.S. American East Coast airports in New York and Boston, using all his directorial powers, gained since a noteworthy "Bloody Sunday" (2002) and an high-end-visceral action-thriller "The Bourne Supremacy" (2004), to capture the continuous following events between 8:30 AM to 12:00PM on that terror-struck day of reckoning, when two of the four plans already crashed into the twin towers of the "World Trade Center" on the island of Manhattan in the State of New York, USA.The documentary-like appearing motion picture captured by cinematographer Barry Ackroyd, who mimics steadicam-techniques becoming hand-held shots in engaging confrontations between Middle Eastern looking hotel-room-prepared terrorists, who stab two passenger, one in the neck, the other into stomach to put the pool of estranged passenger, armed with their cell-phone to hyper-realistic moments of fear, despair and agony, calling their loved-ones in a certain death situation when the suspense levels already drop to an early occupied cockpit of a hostile takeover without any additional lighting transition dressed airplane interiors by never-seen-any-flight-training terrorists, who in retrospective, when I revisit the picture after twelve years after its first release, scare hardly any "war-on-terror" thriller-indulging audience.Nevertheless, 2007 Academy-Award-nominated director Paul Greengrass, whose Best-Director-nomination got favored over a political more relevant real-life terrorist theme against the story of a 10-year-old girl enduring nightmares in Spanish civil-war (1936-1939) scenarios-created by director Guillermo Del Toro, when "United 93" passenger initiative to fight against the hijacking terrorists, steering the airplane into descent, becomes improperly-build, dramatically late effort in an editorial of just exceeding the 100-Minute-marker, which should have been 85 Minutes, when up to three editors had been needed to assemble a majority of beat-subtracting close-up on close-up cut-aways.Yet this consequently realism-preaching motion picture to utmost-authenticity-playing no-star actors desired creative decisions by producing partners Eric Fellner and Tim Bevan at production company "Working Title", sharing a feeling of a by-stander perspectives in the Flight Control room before the naturally down-beating, discussions-engaging conclusion are history.© 2018 Felix Alexander Dausend
(Cinemajesty Entertainments LLC)
jimbo-53-186511
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.
Dan Harden
United 93 is intensely brilliant. A fascinating true story that some may not have known going in (like me), and that simply had to be told. Thankfully it was told by an outstanding director who made an equally outstanding film.The film feels so authentic. Director Paul Greengrass hits the nail on the head with this almost documentary of a film, taking you step by step through the events of 9/11 from multiple points of view, all up until the crash of united flight 93.To find out that the majority of the actors weren't actors but where either playing themselves, or actually worked their characters job in real life was amazing, as the acting was solid and frankly impressive after hearing these facts.The tension in the film never lets up, it builds and builds, up until the films final frame. The ending of the film is where the intensity truly intensifies, as the passengers charge on the terrorists, fighting for their lives in a final attempt to regain control of the aircraft. This is one of the most intense, and in my opinion, best endings to a film I have ever seen.Overall United 93 is hard hitting. A tragic story with a unique focus on the events of 9/11. United 93 is the movie this airliners story deserved as it does justice by those involved and you cannot help but respect the hero passengers aboard the flight
