United 93 – courtesy of the Not-Shown-at-a-Theater-Near-You summer film festival at the Albany County Public Library on Sunday evenings – An intense, powerful, realistic, real-time account (filmed in documentary style with hand-held cameras) by director/writer Paul Greengrass of the one hijacked flight, United 93 out of Newark, NJ, on September 11, 2001, that didn’t reach its intended target (possibly the White House or Congress) because of a heroic, selfless effort from several of the 92 passengers on the aircraft.

Several of the actual air-traffic controllers  (especially Ben Sliney and his team at Newark) and two military personnel played themselves for the re-enactment. We are shown events taking place within the flight-control centers at Boston, Newark, New York City, and Cleveland; inside the a command center of NORAD; and aboard United 93. Communication failures, poor coordination between civilian and military officials, and an inability to get in contact with President Bush contributed to the successes of the terrorists. Much of what we hear outside of the flight is based on transcripts from tapes and recall of participants from the actual day’s events.

The actors improvised from Greengrass’s best guess as to what happened in the final half hour of the flight. (Greengrass and production team contacted family members of every person who died aboard the flight for information – personal details of the victims, phone conversations expressing farewells and messages of love – and permission to make the movie.) United 93 was delayed about half an hour from its scheduled departure, allowing some of the passengers, after the four terrorists had taken control of the plane, to get information via airphones and cellphones of the two crashes into the World trade center and a third into the Pentagon. Realizing that this hijacking was probably similarly doomed, Todd “Let’s roll” Beamer (David Alan Basche) and several men took matters into their own hands in a desperate effort to save themselves or at least others at the intended target. One male passenger had experience as a pilot of single-engine aircraft. Maybe if they could get into the cockpit and wrench the controls from the hands of the terrorists pilot before …

Meanwhile, the military air command after getting conflicting reports from air-traffic controllers, could find only four fighters jets available to defend New York City and Washington, DC, because a major military exercise had drawn away the other squadrons. Further, only two of the four fighters were armed, and the other two headed off in the wrong direction. Needing authorization from the president to shoot down a commercial airliner (or attempt to ram it), the air command could not reach President Bush, who had departed Florida on Air Force One. By the time the president gave permission to bring down an errant aircraft, all of the hijacked aircraft had crashed.

Click here for links to places to buy or rent this movie in video and/or DVD format, or to buy the soundtrack, posters, books, even used videos, games, electronics and lots of other stuff. I suggest you shop at least two of these places before buying anything. Prices seem to vary continuously. For more information on this film, click on this link to The Internet Movie Database. Type in the name of the movie in the search box and press enter. You will be able to find background information on the film, the actors, and links to much more information.

Copyright © 2007 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

Patrick Ivers can be reached via e-mail at .