Sunday, April 30, 2006
Sunday Movie Review
Went to see United 93 with Melinda at the Cherry Creek Theater. It nearly made me cry but unfortunately, they were not purely tears of pride (like with The Great Raid), but mainly tears of sadness. Near tears of near sadness. I think that might be a problem with me. The movie was very good (relatively popular--it's third with a $3.7 million opening day) and it delivered a good message (here's where I channel the extremely smart Dennis Prager).
Most of us remember 9/11/01 and where we were when we heard of or saw the second airplane strike the World Trade Center, which fairly clearly told us this was an attack, not an accident, but we don't know or recall the details. The security screeners didn't find the knives the jihadist murderers had inside their pants. The air traffic controllers barely knew what was going on and could not do a thing to stop the attacks. The FAA couldn't act in time to help, and the military comes off as the least competent and able of the rather inept government entities. They finally scramble F-16s and they head the wrong way. They get other jets in the sky and they're unarmed. They can't find the President to get the shoot down authorization in any event.
So the government failed pretty much at every level, but these guys on the plane (with the surviving stewardesses), mainly Thomas E. Burnett, Jr., under the most tense and harrowing of circumstances, solve the problem not only then but forever. (There will never be another such hijacking, the passengers will rise up and kill them). It was at no small cost to themselves, unfortunately, but their improvised plan is not a second suicide attack; they want to put an American pilot in the seat. So they put the big guys in front and they charge the young Muslim with the faux bomb, kill him and the other stabber and bash in the cockpit door but can't pull the pilot out of the seat in time, which we kind of knew from press accounts and earlier movies (made for TV Flight 93). Even the most dim about recent history know the plane crashed.
The British director, Paul Greengrass, who has done a political account of the Bloody Sunday massacre in Ireland in 1972 (recall the U2 song), uses a little too much hand held cameras for my taste, and spends too little time on the last messages of the passengers who know they're doomed (very effecting though--all the messages are of love) and too much on the pitching plane and struggle towards the cockpit. But this is a tiny criticism of a very good and moving movie. Well done, ya' Brit.
They say on the news that it's a no name cast, but you see faces you recognize here and there (Faye from the TV sitcom Wings is a passenger, for example). Yet the sum of the parts is near brilliance. I have to also admire the probably completely apocryphal account of the only European passenger trying to appease the Muslims by betraying the brewing plot. Sounds possible to me. I know I would never do what the German passenger did, but I wonder if I could have made myself run down the aisle towards an armed fanatic. Hope I never find out. It's 111 minutes long and takes a bit to get cooking but then doesn't look back. If you don't know we are at war with Muslim extremists who want to kill us, you must go see this movie. If you do know it, see it also if just for the recharge. Not exactly a date movie though.
Most of us remember 9/11/01 and where we were when we heard of or saw the second airplane strike the World Trade Center, which fairly clearly told us this was an attack, not an accident, but we don't know or recall the details. The security screeners didn't find the knives the jihadist murderers had inside their pants. The air traffic controllers barely knew what was going on and could not do a thing to stop the attacks. The FAA couldn't act in time to help, and the military comes off as the least competent and able of the rather inept government entities. They finally scramble F-16s and they head the wrong way. They get other jets in the sky and they're unarmed. They can't find the President to get the shoot down authorization in any event.
So the government failed pretty much at every level, but these guys on the plane (with the surviving stewardesses), mainly Thomas E. Burnett, Jr., under the most tense and harrowing of circumstances, solve the problem not only then but forever. (There will never be another such hijacking, the passengers will rise up and kill them). It was at no small cost to themselves, unfortunately, but their improvised plan is not a second suicide attack; they want to put an American pilot in the seat. So they put the big guys in front and they charge the young Muslim with the faux bomb, kill him and the other stabber and bash in the cockpit door but can't pull the pilot out of the seat in time, which we kind of knew from press accounts and earlier movies (made for TV Flight 93). Even the most dim about recent history know the plane crashed.
The British director, Paul Greengrass, who has done a political account of the Bloody Sunday massacre in Ireland in 1972 (recall the U2 song), uses a little too much hand held cameras for my taste, and spends too little time on the last messages of the passengers who know they're doomed (very effecting though--all the messages are of love) and too much on the pitching plane and struggle towards the cockpit. But this is a tiny criticism of a very good and moving movie. Well done, ya' Brit.
They say on the news that it's a no name cast, but you see faces you recognize here and there (Faye from the TV sitcom Wings is a passenger, for example). Yet the sum of the parts is near brilliance. I have to also admire the probably completely apocryphal account of the only European passenger trying to appease the Muslims by betraying the brewing plot. Sounds possible to me. I know I would never do what the German passenger did, but I wonder if I could have made myself run down the aisle towards an armed fanatic. Hope I never find out. It's 111 minutes long and takes a bit to get cooking but then doesn't look back. If you don't know we are at war with Muslim extremists who want to kill us, you must go see this movie. If you do know it, see it also if just for the recharge. Not exactly a date movie though.
# posted by Roger Fraley @ 10:31 AM 
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hard to find a bad review of this pic - it coincidentally gets a 93% rating on rottentomatoes.com - high marks indeed, so a definite Must See. "Not a date movie" - are you saying you took a date but wished it was to a different movie, or just making an observation?!
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