I’m not one of those knee-jerk people who think that the topic of 911 shouldn’t be handled by Hollywood. After 4 years of certain politicians using 911 demagoguery of the issue to keep the country scared for their own political gains, it seems strangely fitting that Hollywood would finally get around to tackling this issue. Let’s face it, everyone remembers what happened in New York, yeah, I know that’s a major observation on my part, but stay with me.
On that fateful day, I was here in Washington, DC. I remember all the panic and false news reports that came out – like fires at the Capitol and on the mall. Some of my fellow co-workers were too scared to even catch the metro home instead they opted to walk 5 or 10 miles. There was so much misinformation that day, that after awhile I turned it off, and almost immediately became desensitized to the coverage. Part of me felt like a heartless bastard for feeling the way I did, but the other part was like enough.
The weird thing about that day beyond all of the poor news coverage and rumors presented as fact was the idea that I always felt like the people on United 93, true American heroes, seemed to have been lost in all the coverage of the Pentagon and World Trade Center. I honestly don’t remember much of any mention of what happened with that flight – at the time. The coverage was like “A plane went down in Pennsylvania, now back to New York.”
For this reason, I don’t agree with people who say that it’s too soon for a film about 911. I think the timing couldn’t be better, people may remember the Twin Towers or the Pentagon but if you are really honest with yourself, how often do you hear about the people on United 93? How often do you hear those cockpit recordings, or hear from family members of that fateful flight? Hardly ever, if you see 911 family members it’s people families from the Twin Towers or Pentagon victims, never anyone from United 93. These people deserve a chance to be in the spotlight and if it takes shameless, vilified, heartless bastards in Hollywood to do it, then so be it.
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Perhaps this is a film that only an outsider could have made, and that’s why British Writer/Director Paul Greengrass was the perfect choice for this sensitive material. The director best known for the action packed Bourne films returns to his “Sunday Bloody Sunday” roots to create one of the most stirring and intense moving going experiences of
the year.
He does it not using typical Hollywood techniques or conventions no he strips the film down to its starkest, most realistic elements. Whether he was sensitive to the subject or just to scared to go over the top; regardless of the reasons behind it, the decision to film this in a stripped down documentary style format works extremely well here.
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