United 93
 

The full trailer for United 93, formerly titled Flight 93, is now online. After watching this trailer, I think it is pretty clear Universal has a pretty big hit on their hands. It's sad they'll be profiting off an event like this, but I can't imagine this thing not being a massive success.

United 93 Trailer

On the other hand, the film was made with the cooperation of the victims' families.

This was originally called Flight 93, but they recently changed the title (perhaps to avoid confusion with the tv movie that A&E recently aired).

wow..... looks ok

Looks a lot better than expected. I am definitely going to see this.

At first I was apprehesive... still am, but I might actually see this now. Looks like they are doing away with the handheld passenger cameras concept?

Yikes...kind of chilling.

I'll definitely want to see this.

= J

I will definitely see this...although I don't know how much of it I'll be able to handle. The guy with the baseball hat is played by a great actor named Cheyenne Jackson, making his film debut...I'm really excited for him, and the trailer seems to be painting him as a central character. I'd be surprised if this didn't do well.

I dunno. After 9/11, I thought a movie about a fireman taking matters into his own hands to kick some terrorist ass and avenge his family would be a bit hit, but it wasn't. Of course, that was fiction.

If didn't help that it sucked balls though.

If didn't help that it sucked balls either.

Palpadious was right. Collateral Damage sucked. Balls. Hardcore-style.

I don't know if this is going to do well at all. Granted it looks a lot better than the ham-handed cheese-fest that the A&E made-for-television movie was, but it's still a touchy subject. I have faith in Greengrass and I will see it in theaters, don't know if most others will...

Honestly, the trailer did nothing for me. I think a movie is not necessary, but of course we all knew one (or many) would be made eventually.

I don't have any interest in seeing it. I'm not so sure that the movie is a guaranteed smash hit.

Cheezy as hell. I just don't get the point. It was so recent. We dont' know a lot about what the people on the plane were going through. To speculate in this sensationalist manner just seems so gratuitous and exploitive. "I wanna be home, with my babies" - holy jeez.

There is a time for historical films, but this event aint history yet. Any film made within 20 years of it's happening is pure exploitation, and no better than those awful movies-of-the-week.

It looks tasteful from what I've seen so far, but it is still way too soon. They should have waited.

Agreed. I got emotional just watching the trailer. Being from NYC, this should have been made 10 years from now. It's got built-in emotion at this point and there might be a lot of people seriously affected if this is a big enough hit and done well enough. Still scary though...especially when I'm taking my first flight across the country next month as well.

Which families? The families of the United 93 passengers? Their endorsement, while important, is still rather small. I don't want to sound crass, but there were obviously others families affected by 9/11. In which case, one could still make the argument that the film is "cashing in."

On a somewhat related note, how noble of a gesture would it be for all the proceeds to go to the families directly affected by 9/11?

No thanks. Maybe in another five years.

Too early for me to see something like this. The preview looked good, but I just can't bring myself to watch something so soon after the tragedy. I agree with the wait ten years crowd.

I wasn't shocked or offended by it, but a small part of me said "too soon"... Either way I don't think I'll be seeing this in the theatre.

i agree with this sentiment. i do not think i will be seeing this as well.

Wow, I'm shocked by all this praise. This movie looks terrible. There's no point to it being made.

I agree with others, this is too soon. Heck, I just watched Grave of the Fireflies last night, and THAT was too soon too.

Saw the trailer when I watched Inside Man this weekend. At the end of it, someone hissed REALLY loud and then yelled "EXPLOITIVE".

I think I'll pass on this as well. It was hard enough watching the trailer.

The first public playing of the cockpit voice recorder of United Airlines Flight 93 was just heard at Zacarias Moussaoui's trial. Turns out that the way things actually went down, differs from what's depicted in the movie (though not so much in "spirit").

But still, Greengrass has got to be pissed. I wonder if it's too late to do re-shoots?


(article about trial: http://www.cnn.com/2006/LAW/04/12/mo...ial/index.html)

Oh, and Jeffrey Wells wrote a really good article on the movie - if this doesn't make you want to see it, I don't know what will....


Is Paul Greengrass's United 93 (Universal, 4.28) a knockout, a time-stopper, a mind-blower? It sure as hell is.

You're probably going to need to stand outside the theatre for a few minutes after it's over and just chill...trust me. And then you're going to want a drink, even if you don't drink. And then talk it out with friends for an hour or so. See it with some. Don't go alone.

Is feeling power-drilled all over again by one of the worst real-life nightmares of all time a good thing? To me, it is. It happened, it's real, and this film knocks your socks off because it takes you right back to that surreal morning and that feeling, that almost-afraid-to-breathe feeling, and to me, that's partly what good films do -- they lift you out of your realm and make you forget about everything but what's on-screen.

All I know is that I was watching and taking it all in, and that the old feelings started to build and churn around and then pour back in, like a damburst. The chills and forebodings of doom were back, and this time with a closer, more comprehensive perspective.

United 93 didn't make me "happy" but I relished it. I'm not a baby or a coward. I'm not a "too-sooner." Show me anything that smacks of honesty and hard truth or at least skillful manipulations of same, and I'm there for firsts, seconds and thirds.


Time's Richard Corliss called it "unbearable and unmissable." Mainly the latter, I'd say. As long as it's not a cheap-ass horror film, I eat "unbearable" for breakfast.

Not one frame of this film struck me as distasteful or exploitative. It shows what needs to be shown with as much restraint as could be managed without changing the known facts.

We were told at the screening that the print shown wasn't quite finished. It looked pretty finished to me. No obviously raw effects, nothing that screamed out, "Oops ...sorry!"

What surprised me is that two-thirds of United 93 don't have a whole lot to do with United #93. They're about what happened as air traffic controllers, the FAA and the military tried to monitor what was happening with American Airlines #11, United #193 and American #77 (i.e., the flights that slammed into the North Tower, the South Tower and the Pentagon, respectively). It's about how a lot of focused dec- ent professionals tried to keep up with the horror and couldn't.

United 93 runs about an hour and 45 minutes. It's about 30 minutes before Flight 93 takes off, but you're not really paying that much attention, frankly, to those doomed souls on the plane...not at first. It's the confused folks in the control rooms who pull you in. The second plane hits about 45 minutes in, give or take, and it's another 15 minutes -- a full hour -- before the hijackers, who've waited and eyeball- ed each other from their first-class seats and stalled, it seems to me, like nervous nellies, before finally making their move.

For me, that opening hour is classic. Greengrass has never done anything quite as good. The tension and verisimilitude surpasses his work in Bloody Sunday, and that's saying something. Each and every bit actor, every line...every last piece of it screws you to your seat.

Those guys playing air-traffic controllers are perfect. Remember the tension in that air-traffic controller scene in the opening moments of Close Encounters of the Third Kind? It's that tripled or quadrupled. Ben Sliney, a gray-haired office mana- ger type who was having his first day on 9/11 as national operations manager for the FAA, plays himself. Nobody, really, seems to be "acting" in this. Every bit player rules in every control-room scene in this film.

What's so affecting is that you know what's coming, and Greengrass just lets it come...tick, tock, tick. There's a spellbinding moment when it all starts...when a 40ish Boston air traffic controller first realizes that American #11 is off-course and not communicating. The moment isn't especially heightened or emphasized. It's just this guy going, "Okay...something's off here"

Once the hijacking on United #93 begins and the killings and screamings and all the rest of that sad melodrama kicks in, then it's a bit more familiar, especially if you're up on what's known to have happened and if you saw A&E's Flight 93 movie last January. That was an okay film. I didn't like the family members crying and saying "I love you" to their loved ones who were calling from the plane (which felt almost icky to me), but it was all right. And yet United 93, no offense, is about two and a half to three times better.

I saw it at the first non-Time magazine press screening on Tuesday night in Santa Monica, and a woman sitting two seats away got up twice, and it's measure of how caught up I was that I was vaguely irritated when she left the second time. How many times does this woman need to take a leak? I wondered. Or is she leaving the room to give herself a break from the tension? Either way, I was vaguely irked. (Why should I care, right? It was her business. But I didn't want any nearby move- ment.)

The remarkable accomplishent, for me, is that I felt no sense of time while watch- ing United 93. It lasts about 105 minutes, and it could have been 40 or 50 minutes. I didn't care, didn't think about it. The damn thing held me, vise-gripped me. Did I have a good time? Definitely, by my standards. I haven't sat through a pulse-poun- der like this in months, and I can't wait to see it again.

Cheyenne Jackson, who plays Mark Bingham, the gay guy who died on United #93, was one of those at last night's screening. I spoke to him briefly, told him it's a hell of a film. He seemed kind of choked up and needed some alone time. Chris- tian Clemenson, who plays Thomas Burnett, was also there, but he was gone in a flash as soon as the credits started rolling.

One tiny beef: The last piece of copy on the black screen says that after 9/11, "America's war on terror had begun." The implied statement, of course, is, "And it continues today!" That it does, but if anyone thinks that what's happening in Iraq right now (and what may even happen with Iran...who knows?) is a blow against terror they're very much mistaken, and that final line struck me as a bit of a rah-rah statement. I think Greengrass should have just let what happened in the film (as he chose to dramatize it) stand on its own and leave well enough alone.