Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		4.0
Audio		5.0
Extras		4.5
Overall		4.5

United 93 Blu-ray Movie Review

Hard to watch, but impossible to forget.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman September 8, 2011

Where were you on the morning of September 11, 2001? If you’re old enough to remember that day, chances are you’re old enough to know exactly what you were doing when you first heard that the United States had suffered its worst terrorist attack in history. For me, that day is emblazoned in my mind not just for the horrifying events that affected everyone as the scope of the tragedy played out in front of the world’s unbelieving eyes, but for a number of more personal reasons as well. First of all, my wife had left for a business trip to Seattle on the afternoon of September 10, leaving me to deal with our then two very young sons by myself, one of the first times I had ever attempted that feat (overnight in any case). September 11 was also the first day my eldest son was going to ride the bus to school, a big event in any kid’s (or parent’s for that matter) life. Most importantly, though, just through the vagaries of fate and/or chance, my own eldest sister had flown out from her North Carolina home on September 9 because we had chosen (months previously) September 11 as the day to finally wade through our late father’s military memorabilia. My Dad was a well known Army General who in true military fashion left huge amounts of historical documents behind (“in triplicate,” as my sister joked), and we needed to decide which of these we wanted to keep ourselves and which we wanted to donate to the large military museum at Utah’s Fort Douglas he had founded (and which is housed in a building bearing his name). Also just by chance, I had decided to defragment my computer late on the evening of September 10, and I awoke very early on the morning of September 11 to see if it had finished. I logged on to AOL (hey, that was state of the art in 2001) and saw the breaking news that a plane had hit the first tower, then believed to be an accident, so early in the unfolding was I joining the story. Within mere seconds I heard a frantic pounding at my front door, and it was my sister and her husband urging me to turn on the television—the second plane had just hit the second tower and we knew we were under attack. Such are the perhaps trivial memories imprinted on each of us from that morning, memories that will never be erased simply due to their confluence with world events erupting in such a tragic manner. How awful it must be for those with loved ones who perished that day to have to live not only with their own imprinted memories of “before” and “during” but also with the horrible knowledge that someone close to them died in the attack. Perhaps there’s some small measure of solace for those whose loved ones died in Flight 93, for as we all know now, the flight was unique in that the passengers found out what had happened outside the confines of their jet and took it upon themselves to fight back, thus making themselves national heroes (quite different than “national martyrs,” something the terrorists evidently saw themselves as being).

The collision between the trivial and epochal is of course what impacted all of us who lived through September 11, 2001, and it is the foundation of what makes United 93 so very meaningful. Director Paul Greengrass perhaps takes his biggest chance by starting the film with a brief prelude featuring the terrorists themselves as they make their morning ablutions and prepare for a day which will see their deaths. These are for the most part incredibly young “soldiers,” and as Greengrass so pointedly opines in his excellent commentary, they are about to hijack their own religion for nefarious purposes as they hijack Flight 93.

Greengrass probably wisely does not give us any backstory on any of the passengers who board the doomed flight, instead letting snippets of conversation give us salient details about many of them. Of course the looming presence of tragedy hangs over every scene of this film, simply because we know what is about to happen to these poor souls. But Greengrass does not sensationalize his material in any way. Though this is perhaps a bit more dramatic than a straight documentary, United 93 certainly has a quasi-documentary feel quite a bit of the time.

The film is also at least as much about heroes of another sort, the air traffic controllers at Herndon, Virginia’s ATC headquarters, as it is about those aboard United 93. In fact the film spends a great deal of time in its opening act portraying the supposedly routine lives of these men and women who are losing track of more and more planes as the hijackings start to play out. The true scope of the day’s plan only unfolds once television news footage of the first plane going into the World Trade Center starts playing, and the more savvy controllers start to fear something nefarious is at hand.

It was of course that somewhat miraculous span of time between the first attacks and United 93’s flight that allowed the passengers of 93 to realize they were part of a horrible conspiracy and to decide they were not going to give up without a fight. The actual hijacking itself plays out in a devastatingly violent, but rather surprisingly quick, series of attacks that brutalizes several passengers and immobilizes the crew within just a few minutes. Disbelieving passengers slowly realize that this is no “ordinary” hijacking, leading to the film’s heartbreaking climax.

I am not ashamed to admit I was bawling my eyes out as the film ended, but I was also filled once again not only with incredible sadness but a certain amount of rage at the events of that date. United 93 may in fact simply be too visceral, even at this ten year anniversary point, for many people who were around that morning. This may well be more a film for the ages than for today, but it is a completely remarkable account nonetheless. Ordinary citizens became extraordinary heroes that day, and though they perished in the process, their memories will live on forever. Hopefully United 93 will help us all to come to terms with the fact that when murderous madness, whether it be religious zealotry or some other form, consumes people, none of us is safe and we must all be prepared to fight back against the darkness.

United 93 Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

United 93 is presented on Blu-ray with an VC-1 encoded 1080p transfer in 2.35:1. Greengrass goes for a verité look here and so many scenes are filmed in what appears to be natural lighting, and grain is considerably increased at times due to the low light. The overall image is reasonably sharp here, sometimes astoundingly so as the early autumn light suffuses certain scenes. (In fact that gorgeous fall light which was so glorious that day is very ably recreated throughout the film). Some of the darkest scenes, including in the somewhat shadowy corners of the air traffic controllers' tower, tend to suffer from some minor crush, but otherwise there are few if any issues to report with this transfer. Both the golden hues penetrating the windows of the plane and the blue-green light of the air traffic controllers' screens pop quite nicely throughout this presentation. Colors are very natural and lifelike, fine detail is more than abundant, especially in the many close-ups, and the image boasts considerable depth of field and clarity.

United 93 Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

United 93 features an extremely involving and immersive lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track that is incredibly well realized. The film starts quietly enough, though with some nice surround elements, as various people get to the Newark airport, but once we're out on the tarmack and jet engines are revving, the audio picks up substantially, with some brilliantly robust LFE and great panning effects. Dialogue is very well placed around the soundfield, especially when one considers that the bulk of this film takes place in confined spaces like the aircraft or the air traffic controllers' tower. Fidelity is top notch, with incredibly full sounds across all frequency ranges. The mix tends to get rather cluttered as things devolve into chaos toward the end of the film, but even then there's a remarkable clarity and separation to all of the elements being utilized.

United 93 Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• United 93: The Families and the Film (SD; 59:51) offers Paul Greengrass talking about if it was the right time for the film to be released, and how he consulted with the families involved to make sure they were behind the project. This is as heart wrenching in its own way as the film itself, but it also helps to give all of us a little buffer zone to better handle the film, watching how brave these people directly affected by the tragedy were both in the initial event and then later when this film adaptation was planned and released.
• Chasing Planes: Witnesses to 9/11 (SD; 48:03) focuses on the air traffic controllers who were confronted by multiple hijackings that horrible morning. Part of what happened that day was the mad rush to try to figure out exactly how many planes had been hijacked and where they were all headed and this documentary contains riveting first person accounts of those attempts.
• Memorial Pages (HD; 3:42) offers a passenger list which allows you to access individual pages giving biographical data on those who were lost on the flight.
• Twin Towers (SD; 2:13) is a trailer for a documentary about two brothers involved in the tragedy.
• Flight 93 National Memorial (1080i; 8:39) is a video dedicated to the memorial in Shanksville.
• Feature Commentary by Director Paul Greengrass. Greengrass' calm demeanor helps to make the horrifying events being depicted perhaps a bit less horrific. Greengrass doesn't shirk from the religious aspects of the Muslim Jihadists, but he rather smartly compares what the Jihadists have done to their religion to what the hijackers did to the airplanes. Greengrass goes into a wealth of technical detail and talks about how sensitive he had to be with such a touchy subject matter. This is a riveting commentary that helps to further illuminate not just the film itself but the events it depicts.

United 93 Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The tenth anniversary of 9/11 is of course an opportunity to reflect, to think back, to remember and perhaps even to pray if you're so inclined. I started this review with my own personal recollections, and this film brought back that day in all its chilling intensity. Chances are as the media inundates us with anniversary specials and the like, you'll have your own memories to sift through and digest. There is no way to get through United 93 without reliving the tragedy of that horrible morning, and for those who can't bear to face those kinds of memories, it's probably better to stay away from this film entirely, at least until more time has passed. But there is no denying the film's immediacy, its well constructed and even keeled approach to depicting a tragedy from which we know going in there will be no escape, and for its clear headed technique which refuses to sensationalize anything. United 93 is a very hard film to watch, but this Blu-ray offers the film in a brilliant presentation, and if you can bear to watch it, it is most definitely Highly recommended.