United 93

Grade: A

Yes. It’s too soon. Much too soon.

It is also the most powerful story of humanity and heroism in the face of fear and evil put on film since “Schindler’s List.”

Expect the heart to pound harder while walking to the theater. Expect a queasiness in the stomach that is unlikely to go away. Expect to be mildly appalled when trailers for this summer’s action flicks flash on the screen in light of the film you’re about to see. Expect your partner to tell you “you’re breathing too loudly” as the film gets underway.

Expect to be profoundly changed.

Gripping and excruciating, audacious and agonizing, inspirational and gut wrenching. Writer/director Paul Greengrass has painstakingly designed a masterful work, a docudrama that is breathlessly dramatic yet never manipulative, intimately revealing yet never disrespectful, unbearably disturbing without ever exploiting imagery, distorting the facts or casting severe fingers of blame.

Mass air-traffic confusion create pangs of empathy that ultimately give way to frustrated mortification as we witness a crippling system-wide breakdown in control, communication and action on the ground. In the air, one can feel the ambivalence, adrenaline and self-righteous indignation pumping through terrorist arteries, all too quickly supplanted by terrifying chaos, heart-stopping panic, palpable fear and outrage. We never get to know the brave souls who fought back, anymore than they would have known each other when they became instantly and inexorably united by circumstance. The stories of their individual lives would come later, making their grace, humanity and resolve in the moment all the more remarkable in the face of being utter and complete strangers. There is no need to create a national fiction about what may or may not have happened on that plane. No need to wave the flag for their lives to have meaning or gravitas. Their courage and dignity speaks for itself. 81 minutes. The flight was in the air for 81 minutes.

With nary a hint of opportunity for character development, it is all the more stunning that real life re-enactors intermingle so seamlessly with actors both on the ground and on the plane. Christian Clemenson, Peter Hermann, Cheyenne Jackson (an openly-gay Broadway leading man playing openly-gay Mark Bingham, something one rarely sees in Hollywood – Cheyenne continues to be a personal hero, it must be said) and the entire cast sear their stunned terror and awe-inspiring spirit into one’s memory. Great credit must also be given to Lewis Alsamari, Jamie Harding, Omar Berdouni, and Khalid Abdalla for their bravery in presenting terrorists not as raging caricatures but as frail, frightened, and mournfully misguided human beings.

Cinematography by Barry Ackroyd is nothing short of miraculous in its ability to recreate moments of flight and confinement sprinkled with subtle historical references that never come close to the gratuitous, and film editing by Clare Douglas & Christopher Rouse and a sparingly placed score by John Powell will have one digging nails into armrests and wishing for a bullet to bite down on.

When passengers begin to make farewell phone calls that have so scorched themselves into our national psyche, it is mayhap the most painful and humbling few moments one is ever likely to experience on film.

Sometimes, “too soon” is a worthy price to pay.

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0475276/