Yeah. I agree. Frankly, I was surprised that one of the terroist spoke German.
See my Above post (and spoiler). I think that having the true affect of an American to the Terrorist needed to be implied in the film.
Do we really need the subtitles once the plane was overtaken?
Hate to Hog the post, but, Im amazed that United Airlines, and less so CNN allowed what apears to be Carte Blanche on Tradmark useage.
As everyone expected, News footage was used, and used well. I was in Class when the actual attacks happened. However, I can only imagine how it felt to see the second tower crash, Live on tv, as it happened. The Film did its job in getting me closer to those feelings.
I just returned from it. I’m still hyperventilating.
I couldn’t (respectfully) disagree more. Take away the fact that it’s based on true events, and it’s still a great picture. It’s what 24 aspires to be and fails.
Having said that, I was a little distracted by the actors. One of the terrorists bore a striking resemblance to Will Arnet of Arrested Development fame. That got in my way a bit.
And a good number of the actors were not actually actors, but NORAD etc. people who played themselves. It became apparent early on who could speak a line and who could not. One would think that this would add a touch of authenticity to the film, but I found it annoying. The blonde chick at NORAD could simply not deliver a line without stumbling over it.
Lewis Alsamari, however, was wonderful and even a bit (too?) sympathetic. I wonder if he will be considered for an Oscar.
In fact I’m betting that this film will be flooded with Oscar nominations, at least for Picture, Director, Editing, Sound Editing, and Score.
This was a great film. I’m certain it’ll be viewed in media/history class decades from now. My theatre showed the standred previews. Throughout the whole film the audience was completely silent. At the end there were a few sobs. No one got up and left, through oddly a couple people changed seats. And was one of the passengers Faye from Wings?
PS Where the clothes accurate? I ask because I’m wearing the same shirt as one of the terrorists and it kinda creeped me out.
It was a very good and suspenseful movie, but at least for me, something short of the “stunning” that I gathered from preliminary reports. The story of United Flight 93 is just too familiar to me (I’ve read a lot about it), and I saw a rerun the TV movie version less than a week before. The differences between the two are interesting.
The TV movie went for a lot more emotionally wrenching scenes of telephone calls between passengers and their familiar on the ground, including a lengthy portrayal of when a passenger asked a Vonage operator to say the Lord’s Prayer with him. In the theatrical movie, this is reduced to maybe two lines, and only from the passenger.
In the climax of the TV movie, the foursome of passengers have a fairly unimpeded run to the cockpit door with the serving cart, stopping only to throw boiling water on the hijacker outside the cockpit. In the theatrical movie, when the hijacker pilot realizes what is happening, he creates violent turbulence that throws the passengers screaming to the floor again and again, and the attack group almost has to crawl up the aisle. And Mark Bingham’s attack on the hijacker who tries to stop them is sufficiently bloody (and frankly, cathartic).
In both movies, the passengers are able to break down the cockpit door and begin an attack on the hijackers themselves. Unfortunately, the 9/11 Commission concluded that in real life they probably did not breach the cockpit, and the transcript of the cockpit voice recording, released only last month, seems to bear that out. The blasphemy of the hijackers ecstatically chanting “Allah is the greatest” as they bring the passengers to their deaths is sickening.
As someone who sits through all the closing credits of movies, I was puzzled that some of the movie was filmed in Morocco. What scene? Maybe there was a flashback to the Middle East that was filmed but not used. We do see the chief hijacker at the airport saying “I love you” to someone on his cell phone.
Yeah, I was a little confused by that myself.
This was a movie that I’d wanted to see, but kept putting off, until tonight.
Wow.
Intense. Powerful.
It was like watching a bad dream that I couldn’t wake up from.
In spite of its R rating, several teens had snuck in. They were as quiet as death throughout the movie, and when they exited.
Is this movie “too soon?” For some, who lived through the attacks of September 11, or who lost someone, or who was at Ground Zero, quite possibly.
For the rest of us who weren’t, I think this is a must-see movie.
Yes, I saw it just yesterday with my wife.
Amazing. Well done with the air traffic controlers and military tension.
They did a great job not filling us in on backgrounds of any passenger. They are just people trying to fight back.
Powerful.
That’s really what makes it such an extraordinary film. There are no heroes, not even heroic deeds. They are just people, doing what needs to be done. None of the passengers have any inherent special qualities…they could have been any one of us.
I agree. I can see myself freaking out. I mean, I’d just be freaking. I think if I got my hands on the first “terrorist” dude, I can see myself just scratching his eyes and throat to kill him.
The fact it makes me see myself taking such vengeance tells a lot of the movie’s power.