WHAT'S SO GREAT ABOUT UNITED 93?
It's the best movie of the year: PERIOD.
Paul Greengrass has crafted a non-judgmental, accurate, fingernail-biting suspense masterpiece the likes I have not seen since, perhaps, Hitchcock's STRANGERS ON A TRAIN. It's basically a pseudo-documentary (a lot of hand-held, no famous faces, a minimum of fancy camera moves) but it works on every possible level.
We know what happens--we know that United 93 is doomed from the moment the film opens. And Greengrass finds his drama not only in bombastic scenes, but also, early on, in those quiet ones that we all can relate to: the boredom of sitting in the boarding area; the flight attendant chit-chat with the fliers: the pilots gearing up for the five hourNewark to San Francisco flight.
And when the drama cranks up, especially when watching the disbelief of the air traffic controllers who realize not just one plane, but a whole phlanx of planes are no longer under their control (!) you just want to leap out of your seat and call someone to do--well, something.
But you can't. Planes start hitting the WTC, a plane slams into the Pentagon, the military seems handcuffed in their response, the air traffic controllers seem to know the most (but can't get info to the right people, apparently), and those poor people on United 93 are oblivious to it. They're already dead, the viewer realizes in a horrible epiphany, and they don't even know it.
I cannot imagine UNITED 93 not getting a Best Picture nomination, nor Greengrass not being nominated for Best Director, Original Screenplay, and his editor not being up for an Oscar as well. This picture is so superior in execution and design to Oliver Stone's WORLD TRADE CENTER that I hesitate to mention them in the same blog.
One word sums up UNITED 93 quite nicely: WOW.
It's the best movie of the year: PERIOD.
Paul Greengrass has crafted a non-judgmental, accurate, fingernail-biting suspense masterpiece the likes I have not seen since, perhaps, Hitchcock's STRANGERS ON A TRAIN. It's basically a pseudo-documentary (a lot of hand-held, no famous faces, a minimum of fancy camera moves) but it works on every possible level.
We know what happens--we know that United 93 is doomed from the moment the film opens. And Greengrass finds his drama not only in bombastic scenes, but also, early on, in those quiet ones that we all can relate to: the boredom of sitting in the boarding area; the flight attendant chit-chat with the fliers: the pilots gearing up for the five hourNewark to San Francisco flight.
And when the drama cranks up, especially when watching the disbelief of the air traffic controllers who realize not just one plane, but a whole phlanx of planes are no longer under their control (!) you just want to leap out of your seat and call someone to do--well, something.
But you can't. Planes start hitting the WTC, a plane slams into the Pentagon, the military seems handcuffed in their response, the air traffic controllers seem to know the most (but can't get info to the right people, apparently), and those poor people on United 93 are oblivious to it. They're already dead, the viewer realizes in a horrible epiphany, and they don't even know it.
I cannot imagine UNITED 93 not getting a Best Picture nomination, nor Greengrass not being nominated for Best Director, Original Screenplay, and his editor not being up for an Oscar as well. This picture is so superior in execution and design to Oliver Stone's WORLD TRADE CENTER that I hesitate to mention them in the same blog.
One word sums up UNITED 93 quite nicely: WOW.
posted by I. Michael Koontz | 6:44 AM
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