United '93

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Year:	2006
Country of origin:	France/ UK / USA
Director:	Paul Greengrass
Genre:	9/11 drama
Starring:	Too many to mention
Rating:	5/5
IMDB link:	http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0475276/
Tagline:	September 11, 2001. Four planes were hijacked. Three of them reached their target. This is the story of the fourth.
Favourite line:	N / A

Utterly absorbing account of what might have happened aboard United Airlines flight number 93, the 9/11 plane that didn’t make it to its intended target thanks mainly to the bravery of a group of passengers on board.
Pieced together from both official data and telemetry, as well as from the phone conversations passengers and crew made whilst in the midst of the hijacking, this is harrowing stuff. There is something deeply unsettling about the atmosphere right from the start, due in no small part to the fact that we already know how this is going to end. Shot in real time, this charts the flight right from the point the passengers get on board, making no apology for the slow pace as what is being documented is real life, and real life does drag at times. Counter-pointing the mundane goings on aboard the flight prior to the eventual hijacking, we cut away to scenes at air traffic control where events are spiralling out of control as it becomes clear that multiple hijackings are taking place at once. The scene where a controller is tracking a suspected hijaked aircraft over Manhattan then announces that it has simply vanished is mesmerising, again as we know why it vanished, having slammed into the side of The World Trade Centre.
Though questions were asked at the time of the movies release about the morality of making a motion picture of the events so soon after the tragedy itself, this answers the questions deftly by dealing with everything in a matter of fact way. Nothing is dramatised, nothing is glorified but the facts, as they are known, are played out in unflinching detail.
Nerve jangling and horrifying, this is a must watch movie for all.
Gripping.