If you want to be thoroughly depressed then go watch this movie! Of course I had no right to expect that it would all be hunky dory in the end but I guess when I go to the movies I almost always expect a nice happy ending. Nevertheless this is one of those movies that just needs to be seen.

As you may probably have heard United 93 is a reconstruction of the events of surrounding the hijacking of the only plane not to make it to its intended target on September 11. We watch as airport control and the military start to realise that there is a real threat in the skies as first one plane and another and another is hijacked and crash landed firstly into the Twin Towers and then the Pentagon. There is absolute confusion as no one is certain which flights have been taken over, which flights are vulnerable, and how many more are about to be taken over. Even after the fact, no one was sure which planes had actually gone down and there is one absolutely horrid scene (like a car crash scene you can’t look away from) as we watch the second plane hit the Twin Towers. Goosebumps much?! Throughout all this first half set up you have flashes now and then of United 93 until the second half takes you to a very unsettling finale on the plane. Apparently the film is shot as much as possible in real time so you definitely get caught up in the feel of the urgency, the panic and the confusion.

No one really knows what happened on United 93 but that the director has done his research is very clear as every scene rings true. There are no big name stars in this one – as is fitting – and there was no attempt to give us any background on any characters in the movie because in the end United 93 is not about the individual but about the human fighting spirt. I left the movie sad and just a little upset but oddly glad that I’d seen this tribute to those on United 93 who did not go down quietly.