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Reviews
United 93 (2006)
They came.... but could we?
This astonishingly powerful movie gives us as close to a documentary view of the real-time unfolding of 9/11 as anyone will likely ever be able to get.
I had initially resisted seeing United 93, remembering the actual day of 9/11 far too well to 'need' the reminder of this movie. But I hesitatingly relented. I was right to give in.
United 93 is not "enjoyable". Nor is it "entertaining". It is unexpectedly, almost overwhelmingly real and sometimes difficult to watch. The R-rating is deserved for scenes that depict with distressing realism the raw violence and coarse, cold malevolence of the murderers on board. But far from embellishing the unknown or exaggerating the more 'photogenic' recorded details, this account of the last stolen flight of 9/11 succeeds in its brilliantly understated, and fundamentally truthful, handover to the audience of what simply happened, and how it happened between 8am and 10am on 9/11/2001. In a way that those of us who watched from the outside would never have quite understood, United 93 displays the confusion, anger, immobility and infuriating false-positives that resulted when expert air traffic controllers and soldiers were caught flat-footed trying to detect the few actually hijacked airliners in a dizzying electronic waterfall of 4,000 simultaneous flights moving across America.
It also displays shocked professionals who traversed their emotions to tackle some of the toughest moral and tactical calls imaginable, all with the goal of saving innocent life. Perhaps as a contrast, we never see the political leaders who are ostensibly supposed to manage such a crisis, only hearing of them remotely as military officers urgently try to contact the President and then anybody who might have the authority to let them stop the now-hostile planes.
United 93 also avoids taking a smooth and easy way out by trying to ignore or muffle the Islamic religious commitments and motives of the terrorists. On the contrary, the film explores this element of contemporary terrorism unflinchingly. Along with their combination of anxiety, hesitation, and astonishing malice, the hijackers' urgently-intoned Muslim prayers and Arabic entreaties add valuable emotional and human realism, while introducing the audience to the ideological anchoring that gave them the mental strength and clarity of purpose to terminate their own lives for the purpose of destroying others'.
The surprisingly rapid awareness and response of the passengers and crew might seem almost artificially accelerated...until you realize that the passengers on United 93 actually DID respond with the amazing speed and flexibility that the movie depicts. The incredibly textured and human reactions of the diverse group of fliers on board could be the centerpiece of a textbook of sociology--and also forces viewers to consider whether they have the mental agility, freedom of thought and passionate moral commitment to dismiss a comforting framework of naiveté -- "let's just do what they say..." -- and respond instead with the same courage and speed generated by this unexpected brotherhood of strangers, as courageous and devoted as any unit of soldiers, who, one begins to feel, were led by destiny to fly and fight together. "They're coming!" yells one of the terrorists as the unexpected response begins. And come they did... but would we? United 93 begins as a prosaic Everyflight that transitions, with amazing speed, into a dazzling example of human bravery, shared mission and a burning devotion to the good.
The brilliantly-filmed conclusion of the movie leaves you with an aching, rending sense of loss and justice denied--but also with an awareness that nobody else but those passengers was able to make the critical difference that morning. United 93 may well become the sine qua non of dramatic interpretations of 9/11. It deserves to.
Chain Reaction (1996)
Really bad. (And goofy!)
This is a really disappointing flick. The disappointment doesn't come so much from Keanu (I wasn't expecting a masterful performance from him back in 1996) but more from the overall plot and especially from Morgan Freeman--who trundles through the movie issuing indecipherable declarations that usually go something like "XYZ is no longer viable!" Uh-huh. Unfortunately, neither is this plot.
Aside from some well-constructed laboratories, too much in this film just doesn't seem to make sense--the outrunning of a nuclear explosion on a motorcycle being just one example! There are some mysterious embraces between Keanu and Weisz--but alas the embraces aren't tight enough to initiate the sonoluminescent fusion of their hydrogen atoms, which might just be enough to save them from the bad guys. (Unless they get saved from the bad guys some other way. Or don't.) The bad guys, for their part, are everyone and everywhere, which forces the story into a 'Brilliant-renegade-discovers-truth, powers-that-be-and-evildoers-try-to-stop-him' framework that just doesn't work for this movie. Freeman especially is badly underused/misused throughout.
Surprisingly I haven't seen this on any Sunday afternoon TV matinées.
Krippendorf's Tribe (1998)
Terrible acting; blame it on worse script
This movie is achingly bad, and may well leave you thirsting for spiritual and cinematic salvation.
It's tempting to blame the low quality on the abysmal acting, but the abysmal acting is surely the product of the even worse script. Saturated with one-liner duds, 10-liner clunkers and painfully feigned scenes, this movie could be usefully employed in screen writing schools as an example of what not to force your actors to try and portray on screen. I'm disappointed that Richard Dreyfus agreed to take this movie, though a senior academic role could have suited his acting abilities well. Instead he pumps a heinous "performance" as a simply execrable poseur (we're supposed to sympathize with this guy...right?)--the quality of whose character corresponds well to the cringe-inducing wretchedness of the writing. Every other character in this movie is a paint-by-numbers cardboard figurine.
The audience suffers through a ride at least as irritating as the one endured by the (humorously-named?) professor's colleagues. Unfortunately the audience sees each rusty step approaching from miles away, preventing us from at least sharing in the colleagues' mild palliative of "surprise". As with many other bad movies this one was banking on a potentially humorous idea that, uh, doesn't quite work out. This movie is of the variation of bad that precludes even enjoying laughing at its radiant badness. Trust me, there will be no laughter. Every part of the movie, from the chokeworthy "jokes" to the Mighty Mighty Bosstones ska tracks suggests a kind of "ironic" self-referential "humor" that we're all (for some reason) supposed to be joining in on. Note to directors: next time please drop the "irony" and just aim for humor. Judging from this movie, that alone would be no small accomplishment! I almost can't believe this thing was released into theaters.
If you paid money to see this in a theater or rent it on video...well I'm just sorry. I would expect to see this as a staple of UHF stations' low-powered weekend afternoon matinées for some years to come. But hopefully not for too long!