‘This is a suicide mission. They are not going to land this plane…’
I don’t want to write a long intro about the cultural significance of 9/11, because honestly, it would just be exhausting for everyone. Let’s just say that as a child of the 90s, it was an event that symbolised the end of my own childhood as well as the end of the age of innocence for the entire western world. In terms of popular culture, there hasn’t been much content to speak of on this topic (understandably). There have been plenty of 9/11 adjacent movies (Zero Dark Thirty, Vice, Remember Me etc) and there was Oliver Stone’s overwrought World Trade Center in 2006, but aside from that, Paul Greengrass’ docudrama United 93 is pretty much all she wrote…
On a day that changed history forever, the bravery of a group of random passengers aboard an ordinary commercial flight saved the lives of untold thousands. Whilst the target of flight United 93 is still unknown, the final destination of the other flights that descended on that dark day suggests that the failed hijacking prevented even more chaos and destruction. While the cast do a great job here, Greengrass purposefully used mostly unknown actors to push the story front and centre – a brave but ultimately successful decision.
Greengrass has always been a director who favours authenticity over bombast, and here he allows his gritty style to come to the fore – the constantly kinetic camera movements add to the overall chaos of the situation and the American director does a great job in capturing the true horror of what must have been an incredibly harrowing situation for all involved.
United 93 is a great movie. It’s compelling, captivating and emotionally draining. But it’s also an important one. As a society, art is one of the most successful ways to process a tragedy. This film may be panic inducing, but it also forces us to confront our own mortality and the failings of our society as a whole – and if that’s not the point of cinema, then I don’t know what is.