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United 93 (spoiler Warning)

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Lemuel

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This was a very well-made movie.

United 93 makes you a fly on the wall: inside the plane, and inside the various control centers that were sharing information and responding to the attacks. It's definitely a naturalistic film, not a "Hollywood" movie. No clever dialog, no manipulative music, no dramatic exterior shots, no forshadowing or other literary device. Literary devices were inappropriate for this film. It is, in my opinion, what the movie needs to be. Given the fact that one can only piece the moment-by-moment events together from the available evidence, this movie reveals a commitment to objectivity.

The only intentional drama happens in the opening few minutes, which depict the hijackers praying to Allah in their hotel room. The prayer continues as a voice-over while the view changes to sunrise in New York and pans over the skyline. Powerful.

The lack of noticable actors would have illicited an artificial sense of empathy from the viewer. An interesting note is that many of the technicians inside the control centers were played by the actual people who were there on 9/11. It didn't take me back to that day (emotionally), but it was hard to watch at times, and know that it will be on my mind for a long time.

The decisive action on the part of the passengers is very inspiring. When they learned of the other planes that hit the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, it wasn't long before they made up their minds. Get weapons, take back the plane.

In my opinion, this movie should have been made, it's not too soon, and it needs to be seen.

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  • 4 weeks later...

I just have to comment on the "spoiler warning" you included in your choice of title for this thread. If anyone's experience could possibly be spoiled by knowing the conclusion of this documentary, I seriously doubt what value this film would be to them in the first place.

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It's more of a habit than anything. I don't mind spoilers in movie reviews, but some people don't like them at all, thus the warning.

Of course, we all know how United 93 ends, but the major reason for the spoiler warning is that I figured fellow Objectivists maybe would not want their perception of the film colored by another's opinion. (I don't know about anyone else, but I tend to pay a bit more attention to people here at OO.net than I do other online forums - there are a lot of smart, well-versed people here!)

(Besides, spoilers aren't always about the end of a film. This weekend's X-Men movie has some pretty heavy stuff that happens towards the beginning, for example ...)

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Every American should see United 93. Most of us are forgeting 9/11 and are shrugging it off.

This movie really made me emotional and I cried a lot, even though it is relatively undramatized or stylized. I cannot stand knowing that blood-thirsty terrorists are killing innocent people, and the US doesn't have the will to

totally exterminate them. It reminded me of when I has threatened and attacked in the middle of high school.

Any sane person would want to jump into the movie and beat the Islamists to death like the passengers do at the end.

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  • 2 weeks later...
Any sane person would want to jump into the movie and beat the Islamists to death like the passengers do at the end.
I wouldn't.

I will not kill people, even if they are completely insane or brainwashed. Nor beat them down to near death.

I saw the movie, according to the information I've got from it, I made a logical conclusion after the movie that terrorists were only one domino in the whole structure of events. So, many things had to do right and wrong for them to come to the plane and get control of it for couple of hours.

Take into account inability of organization to have provide proper (fast) communication. They used archaic 50 year old computer system (?), and used phone in the age of Internet (?). No proper way to track the plane? No way to tell what is going? The flight attendant opening the door? Passengers not fighting back right away? But instead crawling away in fear? ... on and on and on.

Think of each of the things, and try measure their weight and place in the sequence of the events.

It's so much more complex than simple "let's kick terrorists' ass."

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I wouldn't.

I will not kill people, even if they are completely insane or brainwashed. Nor beat them down to near death.

I saw the movie, according to the information I've got from it, I made a logical conclusion after the movie that terrorists were only one domino in the whole structure of events. So, many things had to do right and wrong for them to come to the plane and get control of it for couple of hours.

Take into account inability of organization to have provide proper (fast) communication. They used archaic 50 year old computer system (?), and used phone in the age of Internet (?). No proper way to track the plane? No way to tell what is going? The flight attendant opening the door? Passengers not fighting back right away? But instead crawling away in fear? ... on and on and on.

Think of each of the things, and try measure their weight and place in the sequence of the events.

It's so much more complex than simple "let's kick terrorists' ass."

You get the award for the most incoherent post.

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I wouldn't.

I will not kill people, even if they are completely insane or brainwashed. Nor beat them down to near death.

Do I understand right that you would not beat unconcious or kill a person that was in the process of attempting to end your life along with thousands of others because a government run bureaucracy in the country used out dated technology?

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I thought the movie was excellent. At a time like today, everyone needs to see it to remind them what we're up against. I was pleased that there was absolutely no politics in the movie. It showed only what would have been seen by an observer on the plane or in the control rooms. Moral judgement is left to the audience.

As a side note, I nearly started cheering when they snapped that one guy's neck.

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  • 3 weeks later...
As a side note, I nearly started cheering when they snapped that one guy's neck.

Hey me to!

And I absolutely loved the movie. I though Greengrass did an excellent portrayal of the terrorists. I am so sick of people trying to cast them as something they are not, trying to make us "sympathize" and "respect" them even if we don't "agree" with them.

I had to go see it by myself at first because all of my friends new I would be fuming when I left and none of them wanted to listen to me rant :nuke: .

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I agree with Olex. Force solves only temporary problems.

Much more effective than pure force would be to simply 'follow the money'. For example the legalization of drugs would be a major blow against terrorism (and street crime, too) world wide. Sure, it's possible that more people would die because of drugs, but I'd rather have these dollars in the pharma industry than in some shady international drug network that funds terrorism. Unfortunately many people see only the direct, short-term consequences and not the deep implications for society of drug prohibition.

I've researched flight 93 quite a lot. A much better (and more accurate) description of the 93-story is in 'Among the Heroes' by Jere Longman which is based on original research and interviews with the families who were allowed to hear the cockpit tape. Unfortunately the public is not allowed to hear the tape, thus the movie 'United 93' is just one possibility of what could have happened in the plane. Although the 911 comission refers in their report to the book from Longman, the story in the book contradicts with the official story, so there are still many open questions (at least for me).

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  • 4 months later...
The only intentional drama happens in the opening few minutes, which depict the hijackers praying to Allah in their hotel room. The prayer continues as a voice-over while the view changes to sunrise in New York and pans over the skyline. Powerful.

I agree. Nice observation. It was very frightening.

I also think that the movie was brilliantly made. My whole body was tense throughout the movie as if I was fighting for my own life, and in the end I needed to recover from it before getting up, and the way the movie was made had a lot to do with it:

At the first 1/2 an hour of it, if you want to figure out what is going on, you have to do it based on small clues, scattered across the different scenes, and since the flow of information was fast, it put the observer on a "survival mode", when you have to pay a lot of attention to be able to connect between the events and figure out which plane is which and what is going on.

There was also a spine-tingling moment when one of the controllers saw the plane disappears, and KNEW the reason why (it was the second hit on the twin towers), but there was nothing he could do about it except to watch.

As for the content of the movie:

I was irritated by several things:

1) The complete lack of communication from higher centers (the president) to communicate what should be done, to give instructions. It was always the military center trying to contact the president with no reply, and as a result they were left powerless to deal with future threats.

2) The lack of communication between the controllers in the airline company and the military center. Finding out about the kidnapped plane only 3 minutes after it crashed?! (WTF?)

3) The lack of early action taken by passengers, and the sight of panicky-little cries instead of rational evaluation of the situation. (I hate those blond types that just scream in horror movies instead of doing something). Although, after thinking a bit more about it, I came to the conclusion that maybe their action was on time, because it did take time to realize what is going to happen.

4) The flight attendants lying to passengers (at first) that everything is okay, stay in your seats and don't worry.

5) I was also surprised by the flight attendant just opening the cockpit, instead of giving the pilots any warning sign (like changing her pattern of knock on the door), but later I realized that after seeing a man's throat getting cut with no warning at all, and since she knew that in the past, kidnapped flights ended with all the passengers being alive, she acted rationally and selfishly.

As for taking violent action against the terrorists: It seems irrational to avoid using violence against them in the scene in the plane. The urge to use violence is a survival urge, and not a vengeance urge.

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