Yesterday Michael made the rare suggestion of going out to eat and then going to the movies. We don’t go to the theater often, neither of us like them much. We were thinking about going to see either X3 or Da Vinci Code, but after checking out all the lousy reviews for both I opened up Google Movies and checked to see what the highest rated movie was at the theater we were going to. It was United 93. I hoped that this wasn’t because people were afraid of the masses thinking they were some dirty, america-hating liberal if they said anything bad about a movie made about events on 9/11. Still, I was curious and we decided to catch the 4:35 showing.
So we went to see it.
Now, I may be a liberal intellectual who believes that the 9/11 attacks were blowback rather than something that “came out of nowhere because they hate us and hate freedom.” I know that much worse things happen all over the world every year. But that doesn’t mean I was emotionless about the whole 9/11 thing. I was living in upstate New York when this happened, I’d been to the top of the World Trade Center before, I was content in the security of living in America. This hit home. Watching the videos of the planes crashing into the towers is still scary and make me sad, planes aren’t supposed to fly into buildings. Of course I don’t let emotions dictate my actions, I didn’t want to sign away all my rights, I didn’t even think about ceasing to fly because of this event.
Because the emotions were still there, the movie was tough to get through at times. But I left the theater saying “this was a good movie” because of several things.
1. They didn’t try to add any stupid love story or something into it, it was tastefully done
2. Most of the movie was spent showing how confusing it was for all the agencies involved to respond to the hijackings
3. The cast was pretty believable and the acting wasn’t bad
4. I liked the format and how it was presented
Now, the first thing I do when I enjoy a movie is read the bad reviews. I do this in case there is something I missed, and to open my mind to the things that other people saw in it. The bad reviews I read over at Yahoo! this morning fall into a few categories:
It’s too soon to make a movie like this!
It’s been almost 5 years. I simply don’t agree that it’s too soon.
Hollywood is cashing in on tragedy!
Welcome to Hollywood. No wait, welcome to America… er Humanity… I mean, welcome to planet Earth. Welcome to life. Everyday, everywhere, someone or something benefits from the tragedy of others. I suppose you hate all movies based on actual events where people died, including every war movie ever made, documentaries and a zillion other things. This argument just annoys me.
This isn’t factual. $fact is wrong and $entity lied.
Yeah, the director forgot to consult the all-knowing oracle before making the movie. Any movie made about something as emotionally and politically charged as this will have people picking apart the details. The research done for the movie was pretty extensive, and sure, it took the government’s account of what happened which may be incorrect and politically driven, but it was the details they had. If they had gone the other direction and bought into one of the conspiracy theories it would have been an entirely different film.
It’s propaganda.
Sure it is, and history is written by the winners. Any film based on a reality where emotional and political elements are involved can be classified as this.
The good guy/bad guy line was too black and white
I don’t agree. If you had taken the time to watch the movie instead of fuming about how much you hate what this movie means and how they portray arabs as terrorists (forgetting that these arabs ARE terrorists) you might have noticed a few things. For instance, the “bad guys” were young and scared out of their wits. It’s a horribly sad thing to watch these very human young men deal with this, so intent on believing that what they are doing is right. I think the movie did a decent job of humanizing The Terrorist.
It wasn’t actually a movie you need to see in the theater though, there are very few movies worth paying $9.50+ to get into.