United 93 on DVD

Have you bought your copy yet?

United 93 is easily one of the best movies I've seen in a great many years. No, I am not overstating the case. It's excellent on all counts. Paul Greengrass hits one out of the ball park by suppressing his own political leanings (leftward, or so I have heard) and simply tells the story. I was impressed with what he did with the Bourne Supremacy, making a sequel that, in many ways, exceeds the original. And his Bloody Sunday is on a par with United 93; indeed, if I were Irish I might say it was better.

But I'm not. I'm an American and while I deeply honor the men and women who died in the World Trade Center, and I humbly respect and praise the firemen and policemen and others who died charging into those doomed towers, I am in awe of the passengers on United Airlines Flight 93. And Greengrass does 'em proud.

It's sort of what I was getting at with my bit on the Battle of Thermopylae. There you had a bunch of Spartans ready to die, but the real heroes of the moment were the Thespaians, true citizen-soldiers, not trained from childhood to fight and die, yet stand with the Spartans and fight and die they did.

On UA93, that's what 40 people did. The policemen and firemen who charged into the Trade Center towers faced life and death every day. Certainly they were heroes, but they were already heroes, just for doing the job. On UA93, it was the common citizen who stood up, looked evil in the eye, and said, "You go to hell!"

So maybe the passengers never made into onto the flight deck. Doesn't matter. They still stopped those bastards from using a fourth airliner as a guided missile, to destroy heaven knows what. God bless 'em.

I saw this film with my daughter when it was first at the theatre. Afterwards, we didn't talk much. She went out and got a "UA93" tattoo. She doesn't ever want to forget the sacrifice those people made.

Neither do I.

That easily colors my opinion of the film, but I think it stands on its own merits. Using little known actors and a great many people who were actually involved, Greengrass does a clear recreation of the horror that is and remains 9/11/2001. As said, he doesn't try and paint one patriotic picture or another, he just lets a powerful story unfold on the screen. By the last frame, you're left speechless. I can't think of a miscue in the entire film.

I've got my DVD but I'm rather afraid to watch it alone. It's a powerful experience, especially at the end. It demands to be a shared experience, because what happened that day was, indeed, shared by the world.

So, like I asked: Have you bought your copy yet?