Embodying the struggles and the challenges that passengers face against terrorists, who hijacked in September, 2011 the American plane United 93, the thing that turns down America's stability, so they do their best to face such terrorist and save their lives, but they did not manage to do that, as the plane has crashed in Pennsylvania.
This limitation in source material has had a peculiar effect on the script. Never is there a moment of repulsive sentimentality or exploitation, but neither is Greengrass able to realize an ultimate purpose.
United 93 might be an insular response to a global tragedy, but -- taken on its own, limited terms -- it is powerful and sincere, giving reign to pity and fear without indulging jingoism or sentimentality. For that at least it deserves applause.
Above all, one truth remains: the sacrifice of the 40 passengers on Flight 93 is truly remarkable. The film portrays their courage in the face of staggering odds in its own subjective and respectful way. It achieves what it wants as a film.
Greengrass takes pains to keep events believable and relatively unrhetorical, rejecting entertainment for the sake of sober reflection, though one has to ask how edifying this is apart from its reduction of the standard myths.
