United 93 Reflection

True stories that get told so often that people mistakenly begin to mix up words eventually start to become a myth, not like a fairy tale myth but a myth no one really knows how it all started. That’s what 9/11 is. Everyone knows the basic outlines as to what happened on September 11, 2001, but no one is quite sure as to what really went on inside the four hijacked planes. With the help of cell phone contact from friends and relatives on the ground, the passengers figured out the hijackers did not want to negotiate but were rather on a suicide mission just like the ones that had crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. United 93 tries and makes a good attempt to adhere to reality by adding just the tiniest of details to portray a sense of mystery as if the viewers don’t already know what is about to happen. The director, Paul Greengrass, tries to make the film as realistic as he could simply by making a thoughtful effort to stay away from recognizable actors, as there is no attempt to compare the actors with their histories. If viewers see a really famous person playing an ordinary passenger, it takes the whole focus of the surroundings and puts it on the famous actor with his/her past roles. What we know about the passengers on United 93 is exactly what we would’ve known if we had been on the plane and sitting across

United 93 is made and authentic in feel, but the choices it makes about what happened on the plane can be a bit off. We are familiar with details of this flight, pieced together from many telephone calls from the plane and from the cockpit voice recorder. Greengrass is determined to be as accurate as possible. The passengers are a terrified planeload of strangers. They were Americans just going through their day. Medical responders are taught to deal with carnage and chaos. The passengers of United 93 had none of this