United 93

This has to be the worst movie ever made. A complete fantasy. There is not a shred of evidence for any of it - it is just another conspiracy theory. The bomb belt scene is absolutely laughable. How did he get that past security? And all those cuts to babies in cots, yuck. Cellphones working perfectly at six miles up, at 580 mph crossing transponders at the rate of one every few seconRAB? Come on. Can't anyone think for themselves anymore.

All that is known for certain about Flight 93 is that it took off and that it crashed. The overwhelming evidence that has been independently gathered since is that it was shot down by an F-16, which incidentally is the overwhelming belief of the locals in Pensylvania.

Transparent, laughable, propaganda of the worst and most sentimental kind, playing on fears, creating nightmares and bolstering the war-mongerers.

As the newspaper man said in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) "When the legend becomes fact, print the legend".

Pure Hollywood fantasy.
 
That didn't stop Titanic making $1.8 million, did it?? :)

The fact remains that no-one knows for sure what happened on the plane (on all four planes), and I always get the feeling the government spiced up (i.e. faked) the real account to make a story of the courageous West going against the evil terrorists. Although I know that United 93 doesn't tell the story in a cheesy way.

I read that all four planes were strangely low on passengers that morning - so low that normally the flights would be cancelled and the passengers shifted to a later plane. I'm still a believer that they flew all the planes to a military airbase and they were replaced by remote drone flights. The hijackers could NOT have flown those planes so accurately - particularly the Pentagon impact. Anyway...
 
I've just watched it and I think I've seen a different film to the people populating this thread.

God damn awful. Awful awful awful. For people wanting to see the harrowing bits you really need to fast forward through 1 and a half hours of bad acting (I don't care if they used the real ATC people). It felt like an overblown documentary and at the end of it I was just sat there thinking, "What was the point in that?"

I wish that I'd had enough money to turn out this tripe at the expense of a real tragedy so I could sit back and watch the money roll in.
 
ive seen and it was horrific to watch at times. i know hollywood artistic liscence added quite a bit to the film but it was still real. all too real for my liking.
the last 10mins were particularly hard to watch, and when it was over there was barely a whisper to be heard as everyone left the cinema.
it was too soon to make a film i believe. :(
 
Nobody's ever had the gall to even try claiming the passengers onboard were somehow better in any way.

They were just people who were doing what they could to save lives.
 
This film definately had an effect on me. I felt it was a great film, a moving tribute to those who died on the flight. I just kept thinking how there were people in this situation who had to make these brave, courageous decisions. Even though it may not have been entirely accurate, it perfectly captured the horrifying ordeal they must have faced. And so I'm glad this was made as it respects these heroes and what they did for people on the ground who may have also been killed had the plane reached it's destination.
 
Yes, fair enough, probably should have expanded a little...

Rotten Tomatoes macro analysis of 177 critics has a 90% positive rating. Here Empire gave it 5 stars, as did The Guardian - not lightweight tomes. To say it is "bad acting" is pretty ludicrous - critics (and I and most people watching) wouldn't be remotely tolerant of genuine bad acting. To say "what is the point" is fair enough - I guess most people didn't watch it "wanting to see the harrowing bits", they wanted to try to understand how it unfolded and what it was like, and found the film extraordinarily well made.

Actually, just a thought - when you say "I think I've seen a different film to the people populating this thread" - could you be right? A friend of mine saw Flight 93 by mistake, and couldn't understand what all the fuss was about. That might explain a few things...

Just to check - was the opening scene with the terrorists in their motel room praying?
 
Yes that was the opening scene.

I wonder if watching it on my own has anything to do with it. Stay with me on this one.

I use a thread on the TV forums about Ant & Dec as an example, where someone says that the audience members are imbecilic and my observation was that people are there to let their hair down and enjoy themselves and when you're in a crowd of a few hundred people having fun then the feeling could get quite euphoric and you get carried away with it.

So I was thinking that perhaps the film would have had more of an emotional impact if I was viewing it at the cinema as opposed to sat in my front room where I'm bound sit and analyze instead of getting absorbed by the film.

On a personal note, I find Empire has gone to the commercialised dogs (5 stars recently for Superman Returns, Brokeback Mountain and King Kong) and I don't read any newspapers in this country national or local as they all seemingly have their own agendas. The temptation of 'credible' tomes to pour praise on a film covering this delicate issue instead of being honest so as to ingratiate itself with it's readers as well as getting pats on the back from it's mutual supporters must be hard to resist. I think many didn't resist.

On the acting front, perhaps I am mistaking bad acting with genuine real people trying to 'act' their original responses to each incident and as such it comes across as wooden to me. From a documentary point of view this may be acceptable but I was given to thinking that this was a feature film and hadn't marketed itself as another Bowling for Columbine or Supersize Me.

So to sum up it was a pretty average dramatisation in my opinion.
 
Do you know (and this should be another thread really) but I agree that Empire has gone downhill. 5 stars to King Kong was insane - haven't yet seen the others but I suspect you are right!

Honestly though, I found United 93 totally compelling and believable throughout - maybe as you say using some real people may feel more real to some people and less to others. I also liked the pseudo-docco feel - each to his own and all that.
 
I'd definitely reccomend that people watch this film, and preferably before it leaves the big screen.

I've never been able to understand the criticism of the film, though. The passengers and the hijackers were portrayed sensitively and humanely, in fact the hijackers came across as just as frightened and determined as the passengers. The film is based almost entirely on fact, and even the smallest of errors went by unseen by me. And I don't in any way think that the film is released too early.

The only criticism I had of the film was that it just looked so real that it was frightening to watch. It was based on a real event only five years ago, and the actors were dressed and casted true to their real life counterparts. The camera work and the attention to mundane detail also added to hightened realism.
 
Fair enough. Everyone's going to have an opinion and every now and again those opinions disagree to a greater or lesser extent.

I'm still a happy reader of Total Film but the cracks are showing there too... :(
 
I went to see this last night with a few frienRAB. As a group of guys, everyone was truely emotional by the end of it and this just certifies what fantastic acting skills there were in it. Brilliant acting and an extremely gripping movie which is a rollercoaster ride from start to finish - but you might be a little shaken up by the end of it! :(
 
I went to see this late last night. What a film, very very emotinal. Usually when the traliers come on we get up and go, but for some reason all of us just contiuned to sit there without moving till it was appropiate to move.
Then when we left there was not the usuall chat about what the film was like. It was slightly different to the doc TFTFB but as they will never now exactly what happened onboard the plane you can ignor it.
 
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