United 93 (2006)

A real-time account of the events on United Flight 93, one of the planes hijacked on September 11th, 2001 that crashed near Shanksville, Pennsylvania when passengers foiled the terrorist plot.

Director:

Paul Greengrass

Writer:

Paul Greengrass

Stars:

David Alan Basche, Olivia Thirlby, Liza Colón-Zayas

Nominated for 2 Oscars. Another 29 wins & 54 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 11, 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 terrorists to take back the control of the airplane.

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Plot Keywords:

passenger | plane | flight | terrorist | september 11 2001 | 

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Taglines:

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

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Genres:

Drama | History | Thriller

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Motion Picture Rating (MPAA)

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

Details

Country:

USA UK France

Language:

English Arabic German

Release Date:

28 April 2006 (USA)

Also Known As:

United 93

Filming Locations:

Boston, Massachusetts, USA

Company Credits

Production Co:

Universal Pictures, StudioCanal, Sidney Kimmel Entertainment

Technical Specs

Runtime:

111 min

Sound Mix:

DTS Dolby Digital SDDS

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.39 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

United flight 93 was one of the four planes hijacked as part of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, possibly intended to crash into and destroy the Capitol building in Washington, D.C. It crashed near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, about 150 miles northwest of Washington. It was the only one of the four planes that didn't reach its intended target.

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Goofs

The United logo at the gate was not in use in 2001.

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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

Referenced in Everything Wrong with...: Everything Wrong with Troll 2 in 19 Minutes or Less (2016)

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.