United 93 (film)

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United 93 is a 2006 film written, co-produced, and directed by Paul Greengrass that chronicles events aboard United Airlines Flight 93, which was hijacked during the September 11 attacks. The film attempts to recount with as much veracity as possible (there is a disclaimer that some imagination had to be used) and in real time (from the flight's takeoff) what has come to be known in the United States as an iconic moment of heroism. According to the filmmakers, the film was made with the cooperation of many of the passengers' families (though there are some notable exceptions.) United 93 premiered on April 26, 2006 at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York City, a festival founded to celebrate New York City as a major filmmaking center and to contribute towards the long-term recovery of Lower Manhattan. Several family members of the passengers aboard the flight attended the premiere to show their support. The film opened nationwide in North America on April 28, 2006. Ten percent of the gross from the three-day opening weekend was promised toward a donation to create a memorial for the victims of Flight 93. United 93 grossed $31.4 million in the United States, and $76.2 million worldwide.

Plot
The film opens early on the morning of September 11, 2001 with hijackers Ahmed al-Nami and Saeed al-Ghamdi praying in their hotel room, United 93's skyjacking ringleader Ziad Jarrah reading the Quran, and Ahmed al-Haznawi shaving, then leaving for Newark International Airport. At the airport, the passengers and crew board United Airlines Flight 93 along with the hijackers. Shortly after boarding, Flight 93 is delayed for 30 minutes because of the high volume of traffic. The three other hijacked flights, American Airlines Flight 11, United Airlines Flight 175, and American Airlines Flight 77 take off. Flight 93 passes by Manhattan. The pilot, Jason Dahl, makes a left bank and tells the forty-five passengers that those on the left side of the Boeing 757 have a clear view of Manhattan, especially of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. Hijacker Ziad Jarrah, who is sitting in seat 1B, catches a final glimpse of the World Trade Center as the plane climbs away. Air traffic controllers monitoring all current flights notice that American Airlines Flight 11, a Boeing 767 from Boston to Los Angeles, might be hijacked. They think that it is a possible hijack, but can't get it confirmed. They play back tapes and learn from a tape that the hijacker says that he has some planes. They then learn that United Airlines Flight 175 is also hijacked. American Airlines Flight 77, a Boeing 757 from Dulles International Airport to Los Angeles is also hijacked. The traffic controllers alert the U.S. Air Force, who debate whether or not to shoot down all suspected hijacked flights. The air traffic controllers and Air Force then watch as Flight 175 crashes into the South Tower of the WTC on live television, reported by CNN. Soon, military personnel say that American Airlines Flight 11 had not hit the North Tower, but was diverted to Dulles International Airport. Word of the planes that hit the World Trade Center reaches Flight 93, and the terrorists then decide to begin the hijacking. At 9:28 AM, after Ahmed al-Haznawi assembles a fake bomb out of materials he brought on the airplane, the other three hijackers wrestle their way into the cockpit and overpower pilots Jason Dahl and LeRoy Homer Jr. In the cockpit they put a photo of the U.S. Capitol, their target, on the flight yoke mounted clipboard. By this time, Flight 77 has crashed and created a huge fireball at the Pentagon. Soon, those at the air traffic control center in Cleveland suggest that Delta Air Lines Flight 1989 has also been hijacked, as Flight 93 heads closer towards the aircraft. Soon afterwards, Flight 1989 is taken off the list, and meanwhile Flight 93 soon turns towards D.C.. To the growing consternation of Ben Sliney and his staff, coordination with the Air Force is haphazard and there are not enough planes ready, or armed, to respond to an in-air hijacking. Sliney ultimately decides to shut down all airspace in the United States and ground every flight. The hijackers do not prevent the people from making phone calls through the on-board GTE Airfone system. After hearing about the planes crashed into the WTC and the Pentagon, the passengers and crew understand that if they do nothing, they will also die, and eventually elect to storm the cockpit and attempt to retake the plane. The passengers make one last set of phone calls to friends and family, in which they declare their intentions. After the passengers do so, Todd Beamer exclaims, "Let's Roll!" The remaining crew assemble what makeshift weapons they can: cutlery, wine bottles, a fire extinguisher etc. Learning that passenger Donald Greene can fly a plane (although he has not flown a commercial aircraft), the group pin their hopes on him being able at least to control the plane. Jeremy Glick leads the charge towards a stunned Haznawi, who is quickly subdued and beaten by Glick and Nacke, while Bingham crushes his skull with a fire extinguisher, killing him. Nacke snatches the bomb, revealing it to be a fake. Alerted by al-Nami, Jarrah rocks the plane violently to throw the passengers off balance, while al-Nami tries to hold off the passengers, with the use of a serving cart, Mace and a fire extinguisher; the passengers push the cart back into him and a scared Nami is tackled and after gouging out his eyes, Glick snaps Nami's neck, killing him. The passengers then batter the cart against the cockpit door. A terrified Jarrah and Ghamdi realize they would fail in their mission, and despite Ghamdi's efforts to hold against the door and use the axe to frighten the passengers, the passengers batter the door enough to rip it off its hinges. Jarrah puts the plane into a steep dive, just as the passengers storm the cockpit, and struggle fiercely with Ghamdi and Jarrah. Ghamdi tries to protect Jarrah but the passengers overpower him, as Burnett begins choking out Jarrah. As the passengers and hijackers wrestle for control, the aircraft inverts and crashes into a Shanksville field, killing everyone aboard.

Production
The film was the first Hollywood feature to draw its narrative directly from the September 11, 2001 attacks. Passengers were portrayed in the film mostly by professional actors (Tom Burnett, for instance, is played by Christian Clemenson, who has appeared on Boston Legal). The roles of one of the flight attendants, the two pilots, and many other airline personnel were filled by actual airline employees. Some participants in the real-life events play themselves, notably FAA operations manager Ben Sliney. The dialogue, which was mostly improvised during rehearsals Greengrass held with the cast, was based on face-to-face interviews between actors and families of those they portray. Almost none of the passengers in the film are referred to by their names. Their identities remain anonymous, emphasizing the group effort over any individual heroics (and also portraying the fact that strangers on an airplane would not know one another's names). Much of the dialogue uses technical authenticity rather than theatrical embellishments, such as talk about if a plane has "Squawked 7500." Filming took place on a 20-year-old reclaimed Boeing 757, formerly operated by MyTravel Airways, at Pinewood Studios near London from October until December 2005. The cockpit was built by Flightdeck solutions. The location was chosen both for its financial incentives and to shield actors from unwanted public scrutiny they might have received in the U.S. Action was filmed with handheld cameras, chosen for their versatility on the close-quarter sets and to create a sense of immediacy. The title was changed from Flight 93 to United 93 in March 2006, to differentiate it from the A&E TV film. Shortly thereafter, the film was given R rating by the Motion Picture Association of America for "language, and some intense sequences of terror and violence." Universal Pictures appealed this rating, but it was rejected. The film was released in U.S. cinemas on April 28, 2006. It opened second in the weekend box office behind RV, but netted a slightly higher per-screen average. Initial screenings ended with the closing credits line "America's War on Terror had begun." This was replaced in the release version with '"Dedicated to the memory of all those who lost their lives on September 11, 2001."

Historical background
The real United Airlines Flight 93 was a Boeing 757-222 flight that regularly flew from Newark International Airport (now known as Newark Liberty International Airport) in Newark, New Jersey, to San Francisco International Airport in San Francisco, California. On September 11, 2001, the aircraft on the flight was one of the four planes hijacked as part of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, possibly intended to crash into and destroy the United States Capitol building in Washington, D.C. It was the only one of the four planes that did not reach its intended target, instead crashing near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, about 150 miles northwest of Washington.

Criticism
The film has been criticized for its portrayal of German passenger Christian Adams. Of all passengers on the plane, only Adams is portrayed as counseling appeasement. Sunday Times critic Cosmo Landesman mused, "Surely one of the passengers didn't phone home to point out that there was a cowardly German on board who wanted to give in?" Critic John Harris suggested in a Guardian blog, "there will surely be all kinds of cries about old European surrender monkeys, the United States' contrasting backbone etc." The Guardian reports that Silke Adams, Adams's widow, is "believed to have refused to cooperate on the film, saying that the memory of her husband's death was still too raw" and states that "so far there is no evidence to suggest that Christian Adams did not support the other passengers, or refused to storm the cockpit." After the trailers for the film began circulating in cinemas, there were calls for Universal Pictures to pull them, due to the upset and surprise caused to some audience members. One theatre in Manhattan pulled the trailer after audience complaints. The Iraqi-born, London-based actor Lewis Alsamari, who plays a hijacker in the film, was reportedly denied a visa by United States immigration authorities when he applied to visit New York City to attend the premiere, despite having already been granted asylum in the United Kingdom since the 1990s. The reason reported to have been given was that he had once been a conscripted member of the Iraqi Army — although this was also the grounds for his refugee status after his desertion in 1993. Other sources say that he applied late for his visa and that it was not denied. The cockpit voice recorder tape from United Flight 93 has never been made public; however the transcript was made public after the film was completed, shedding more light on what actually happened in the final 30 minutes before the plane crashed. In some parts, it may contradict the choices made by the filmmaker in terms of some dialogue and specific aspects of the event. For example, the pilots, Jason Dahl and LeRoy Homer, are shown in the film to be killed by the terrorists immediately as they are hijacking the plane. Some statements made by the terrorists in the transcript of the cockpit voice recorder tape, as well as moans heard in the background inside the cockpit, raised doubts that both pilots were indeed dead before the plane crashed; however, other documentary evidence from the 9/11 Commission Report indicated that at least one passenger reported in a cell phone call seeing two bodies, possibly the pilots, lying dead on the floor outside the cockpit after the hijacking.

Critical reception
United 93 was one of the most critically acclaimed movies of 2006. Roger Ebert, Michael Medved, Peter Travers, and James Berardinelli all awarded it with four stars. It was termed 'one of the most moving films of the year' by Peter Travers in Rolling Stone, and achieved an average 90% rating from the Web site Rotten Tomatoes, another 90% from Metacritic and a 95% from the Broadcast Film Critics Association. United 93 appeared on 214 critic's Top-10 lists (the third most of any 2006 film), and was ranked #1 on 47 lists (the most of any 2006 film). At the website Movie City News, which ranks 250 critics lists and awards point values for list-placement, United 93 ranks as the #1 movie of 2006  with a score of 917.5 points. On Metacritic, the film appears on 39 top ten lists, more than any other 2006 film on the site, although the 2006 film with the highest average score on the site is Army of Shadows.

Top ten lists
Only two films (The Departed and The Queen) appeared on more top ten lists of the best films of 2006 than United 93, and no film received more #1 mentions:


 * 1st — Empire
 * 1st — J.R. Jones, Chicago Reader
 * 1st — Kyle Smith, New York Post
 * 1st — Lawrence Toppman, The Charlotte Observer
 * 1st — Michael Rechtshaffen, The Hollywood Reporter
 * 1st — Michael Sragow, The Baltimore Sun
 * 1st — Mike Russell, The Oregonian
 * 1st — Noel Murray, The A.V. Club
 * 2nd — Claudia Puig, USA Today
 * 2nd — James Berardinelli, ReelViews
 * 2nd — Marc Mohan, The Oregonian
 * 2nd — Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune
 * 2nd — Nathan Rabin, The A.V. Club
 * 2nd — Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly
 * 2nd — Shawn Levy, The Oregonian
 * 2nd — Sheri Linden, The Hollywood Reporter
 * 2nd — Staff, Film Threat
 * 3rd — Ann Hornaday, The Washington Post


 * 3rd — Desson Thomson, The Washington Post
 * 3rd — Marjorie Baumgarten, The Austin Chronicle
 * 3rd — Scott Foundas, LA Weekly
 * 3rd — Scott Tobias, The A.V. Club
 * 3rd — Ty Burr, The Boston Globe
 * 4th — Kirk Honeycutt, The Hollywood Reporter
 * 4th — Rene Rodriguez, The Miami Herald
 * 4th — Richard Corliss, TIME magazine
 * 4th — Tasha Robinson, The A.V. Club
 * 5th — Frank Scheck, The Hollywood Reporter
 * 5th — Keith Phipps, The A.V. Club
 * 6th — Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
 * 6th — Peter Travers, Rolling Stone
 * 6th — Stephen Holden, The New York Times
 * 8th — Dennis Harvey, Variety
 * 8th — Lou Lumenick, New York Post
 * 8th — Marc Savlov, The Austin Chronicle
 * 8th — Ray Bennett, The Hollywood Reporter
 * 9th — William Arnold, Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Joe Morgenstern of The Wall Street Journal and Steven Rea of The Philadelphia Inquirer named it among the top ten best films of 2006.

Awards and nominations
United 93 received numerous awards and nominations from film critics and guilds. Ultimately, the film received two Academy Award nominations, including Best Director, at the 79th Academy Awards and 6 BAFTA nominations, including Best British Film, at the 60th British Academy Film Awards winning two for Best Director and Best Film Editing.

Home media release
United 93 was released to DVD on September 5, 2006, in both widescreen and fullscreen. Also released was a 2-disc Special Limited Edition in widescreen. The 1-disc editions included the following: The 2-disc edition included the above special features plus the following: The 1-disc editions are still being produced and shipped into stores, but the special limited edition is now only available online.
 * Feature Commentary with Director Paul Greengrass
 * United 93: The Families and the Film (videos of each family meeting the actor who plays their lost loved one)
 * Memorial Pages
 * Featurette: Chasing Planes-Witnesses to 9/11.