United 93 (2006)

A real time account of the events on United Flight 93, one of the planes hijacked on 9/11 that crashed near Shanksville, Pennsylvania when passengers foiled the terrorist plot.

Director:

Paul Greengrass

Writer:

Paul Greengrass

Stars:

J.J. Johnson, David Alan Basche, Liza Colón-Zayas

Nominated for 2 Oscars. Another 24 wins & 21 nominations.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
J.J. Johnson	...	Captain Jason Dahl
Gary Commock	...	First Officer LeRoy Homer
Polly Adams	...	Deborah Welsh
Opal Alladin	...	CeeCee Lyles
Starla Benford	...	Wanda Anita Green
Trish Gates	...	Sandra Bradshaw
Nancy McDoniel	...	Lorraine G. Bay
David Alan Basche	...	Todd Beamer
Richard Bekins	...	William Joseph Cashman
Susan Blommaert	...	Jane Folger
Ray Charleson	...	Joseph DeLuca
Christian Clemenson	...	Thomas E. Burnett, Jr.
Liza Colón-Zayas	...	Waleska Martinez
Lorna Dallas	...	Linda Gronlund
Denny Dillon	...	Colleen Fraser

Storyline

On September, 11th 2001, two American Airlines and two United Airlines domestic U.S. flights are hijacked by terrorists. After the collision of two planes against the World Trade Center and one against the Pentagon, the passengers and crew of United Flight 93 decide to struggle against the four terrorist to take back the control of the airplane.

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Plot Keywords:

passenger | flight | terrorist | september 11 2001 | hijack | 

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Taglines:

On September 11th, one of our darkest day in our history, 40 ordinary people sat down as strangers, and stood up as one.

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Genres:

Crime | Drama | History

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Motion Picture Rating (MPAA)

Rated R for language, and some intense sequences of terror and violence (appeal planned)

Details

Country:

France UK USA

Language:

English Arabic German

Release Date:

28 April 2006 (USA)

Also Known As:

Flight 93

Filming Locations:

Boston, Massachusetts, USA

Box Office

Budget:

$15,000,000 (estimated)

Opening Weekend:

$97,683 (Hong Kong) (8 September 2006)

Gross:

$177,151 (Chile) (29 September 2006)

Company Credits

Production Co:

Universal Pictures, StudioCanal, Sidney Kimmel Entertainment

Technical Specs

Runtime:

111 min

Sound Mix:

SDDS DTS Dolby Digital

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

There are no indications that the German passenger Christian Adams really acted the way he did in the movie. The story of the only European victim trying to stop the others from attacking the terrorists is fictitious and not based on any recordings or phone calls made in the plane.

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Goofs

Despite the aircraft being flown manually, on the Primary Flight Display in some of the scenes, "CMD" text is still present (possibly taken from another aircraft). It means the plane is still under the control of the autopilot.

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Quotes

[first lines]
Ahmed Al Haznawi: [subtitled Arabic] Ziad. It's time.

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Crazy Credits

The very last line of closing credits states that the movie was "not sponsored by, or in any way affiliated with, United Airlines."

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Connections

References The Wizard of Oz (1939)

User Reviews

Devastating, Relentless and Ultimately Cathartic…Essential Viewing. Period.

A most cathartic experience came over me when I viewed the much publicized "United 93". At once speculative and realistic, the 111-minute film will surely bring back the pall of fatalistic inevitability one feels about 9/11, but its more defining characteristic is revealing the untapped heroism and humanism of people caught in the most malevolent of circumstances. Masterfully written and directed by Paul Greengrass, this relentlessly intense movie covers that fateful morning when United Airlines Flight 93 departed Newark for San Francisco with 33 passengers and seven crew members on board.

As it turns out, Greengrass's heavy background in documentaries turns out to be a blessing in this treatment, as he tracks the subsequent events in real time and uses either under-the-radar actors or actual aviation personnel to play the real-life characters. Instead of focusing on the higher profile passengers to provide an emotional locus, which a more commercial filmmaker would have done, he encompasses all the passengers within the emotional purview of the film, including the four hijackers who killed the pilots and took control of the plane. The key dramatic difference is that we get to know not the people but the situation at hand. Consequently, we get a more realistic sense of the scale of the events that may have occurred on that flight. That's not to say it is any less devastating. In fact, the last half-hour is harrowing in the most personal sense as the inevitable becomes reality.

The power of the film comes from its surprisingly apolitical perspective and the inclusion of the ground personnel trying to comprehend the scope of all the redirected planes that day, in particular, Ben Sliney who effectively plays himself that day, the just-promoted supervisor of the National Air Traffic Control Center in Herndon, Va. None of the actors stand out because the film cumulatively achieves a verisimilitude that simply knocks me out. The film also does not pretend to be the definitive version of what happened on the last few moments of the flight. In an emotional sense, it is rather moot as we are talking about degrees of detail at that point. This is truly essential viewing.