Movie Review - United 93 (2006), Part 1

I'm sure most of us remember very clearly what we were doing on that bright sunny Tuesday morning...

I was at the office, writing, editing, reading. Just another normal day at work.

When we heard through a young engineer who constantly checks his stocks on his office computer that a plane hit the World Trade Center, we thought it was a nasty fluke. A terrible accident but an accident nevertheless.

But as the news of the fire got progressively worse we all gathered around the huge TV set in the conference room downstairs. There were about twenty of us.

And then the second plane hit the second tower live, just AS WE WERE WATCHING, ahhhhh... the horror of it all...

I'll never forget that moment when first my breath and my blood, then as if my soul and my spirit, left my face, limbs and my body... I never thought one could have a near out-of-body experience in the face of a shock that great and unexpected.

The great ensemble piece "United 93 (2006)" captures that moment eerily well. That moment when not the first but the second plane also hits the WTC, and the total shock and brief silence that follows in flight control rooms and strategic decision making centers all across the USA, that crucial turning moment in American history is captured exceedingly well in this film written and directed by Paul Greengrass.

Having said that, I also have to admit what a painful, excruciating experience it was for me to sit through this one. I tried to postpone seeing it as much as I could but I'm an incurable movie fan. So I had to see it.

So I did and I was devastated. It is still too much for me to come face to face once again with the well-planned evil that has sent thousands of innocent men, women and children to their totally undeserved deaths on that lovely September morning. Since then, Septembers are not that lovely for me anymore.

(To conclude in part 2.)