Final Destination

For a while now, I'd been hearing good things about the movie United 93, the story of the fourth plane hijacked in the September 11th attacks, that crashed in Pennsylvania when the passengers fought back in an effort to reclaim the plane. I finally took a chance and saw it, and was not disappointed.

I was not interested in the question of whether it was "too soon" (now, or when it was first released three years ago) for this movie. On that level, I tried to think of it no different than, say, a movie about Pearl Harbor. (Though I was desperately hoping it was going to be better than the actual movie Pearl Harbor. Egads.) Was it simply a well-made movie?

For the very large part, yes. An interesting choice was made in the writing: after the first 10 minutes, which basically covers "early that morning," the remainder of the movie unfolds in real time. As the fated flight waits in line at Newark to take off, we jump around to other locations where signs are beginning to amass that hint at what's to come. In fact, events on the plane itself are a very distant second in prominence for more than half the film.

This minute-by-minute presentation is extremely effective for ratcheting up tension for the audience. Director Paul Greengrass doesn't just rely on people's knowledge of events to do it, nor does he resort to any cheap cinematic tricks. Things just keep building and building in a natural and compelling way.

But the drawback here is that since we're following so many people in so many places, and over a tight 90-or-so minutes, there's simply no time to get to know any of them as characters. Pretend for a moment (if possible) that this was fiction. Would you tell a story like this and have absolutely every character in it be a near-cipher? Yes, actions (and occasionally dialogue) do paint in a bit for us, but I'd challenge anyone to be able to actually give the name of a single character in the movie when the end credits arrive.

Still... maybe it's not necessary. What's there is really gripping. The cast is really spectacular from top to bottom, even though you'd probably only recognize one or two of them from anywhere else, depending on how many movies and TV series you watch. (One of the passengers, for example, is Christian Clemenson, who played Jerry "Hands" Espenson on Boston Legal.) The direction, as I mentioned earlier, is commendable, worthy of the Oscar for which Paul Greengrass was nominated. And he also wrote the script, which is solid. I might not have done that 10 minutes of "non-real time" at the beginning, given where the rest of the script was going, but aside from that, I don't know how it could have been done better.

I'd rate the movie a B+. You can see it because "you should," if that's what you feel. But I'd say see it because it's actually a very good movie.