Paul Greengrass's United 93 is beyond devastating. His film about the events of Sept. 11, 2001, is all the more numbing because it is handled with such dignity and efficiency.
It looks at the plight of the individuals on the fourth hijacked plane and at the response in control centres on the ground.
There are no histrionics, no emotion-packed flashbacks or cuts to the homes of the passengers.
Once the 40 people strap themselves into United Airlines flight 93, the film plays in real time, detailing what most likely happened in those 91 minutes.
Because many of the passengers phoned their families or emergency lines, Greengrass has a sketchy idea of how people reacted to the unimaginable event.
He knows a handful of brave, determined men and women chose to overpower the terrorists who were holding them and the aircraft hostage.
He doesn't need to show very much to involve the viewer intellectually and emotionally.
Those brief phone calls in which passengers said their goodbyes to their loved ones are harrowing.
Equally unsettling are the reactions of the staff in the airport control towers, the FAA command centre in Verndon, Va. and the military command centre in upstate New York.
In a fictional account these people would all be impressively mobilized. Not so in real life. They were stunned into disbelief and inaction.
The actors capture this beautifully as their voices are hollow, rather than emotional.
There are so many powerful images in United 93, but there is one that dwarfs them all.
The staff in the Newark Airport Control Centre discover their tracking devices have lost a commercial airliner. The windows in the centre have a clear view of the World Trade Center.
To their horror, they watch as the plane they were tracking crashes into the building.
The film soundtrack doesn't soar, nor do Greengrass's cameras zoom in on the World Trade Center, yet that brief second of horror registers on the viewer as indelibly as it did on those controllers.
Greengrass wisely cast United 93 with lesser known character actors and some non- actors.
He had airline personnel play the crew of the plane and many of the people in the control centres are not actors.
It adds to the documentary feel Greengrass wants and makes the film all that more authentic.
One of his braver choices is to show the fear and tension the terrorists must have been experiencing.
It's not a plea for sympathy, but rather a valid attempt to make them more human and his film more horrifying.
It shouldn't be all that surprising that Greengrass has made such a powerful and overwhelming film. He achieved the same remarkable feat in his 2002 film Bloody Sunday, which examined the 1972 massacre of anti-British protesters in Northern Ireland.
These films are not meant to be entertaining.
They stand as reminders that man's inhumanity to man may be inconceivable -- but it is a fact of life.
(This film is rated 14-A)
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