Dir: Paul Greengrass
Rated: M
Length:1hr 51 mins
(Release 17th August 2006)

The pop-corn was still. The choc-top wrappers lay quiet. The audience watching United 93 was silenced absolutely, and so were the questions - the most pressing of which is not  "is it too soon?", but "why again?" Paul Greengrass (Bloody Sunday, The Bourne Supremacy) wipes that query away with one of the most affecting films in recent memory, and replaces it with another. If United 93 was thrashed at the box office by R.V., are the terrorists winning? And are they deserving victors?

Starting with an obsessive compulsive level of research (where possible, it was established whether passengers would have ordered coffee or tea), Greengrass then employed a combination of unknown and first-time actors, along with many of the real people involved. The result could have been just an extended re-enactment, like a very good, very long episode of Crimestoppers. But the congregation of jowls, balding pates and asymmetrical features normally absent from the commercial screen (except when they combine in the form of Jon Lovitz), manage to act in service of the story's emotional drive, instead of just in service of Acting. The stand-out is aviation man Ben Sliney, perhaps the best portrayer of himself since Al Pacino, who ranges through incredulousness, quiet sorrow and bewildered resolve with the kind of nuance not recognized by Academy Awards. 

When realism is the aim, there's no substitute for the real people, and the most dramatic scenes in United 93 often take place in near silence. One reaction to the second plane hitting is a bewildered "Oh my Gosh". Even the famous "let's roll" line, which could so easily have been Bruckheimered onto a swell in the score, is instead deadpanned.

A full appreciation of United 93's accomplishment comes not from focusing on how good it is (and it is very good), but how bad it is not. It's all too easy to imagine the treatment this subject could get in the wrong hands. Oliver Stone's upcoming World Trade Centre, in fact, is exactly like your imagined version of a blockbuster travesty disgracing 9/11, only it stars Nicholas Cage instead of Tom Hanks.

If the trailer for World Trade Centre is any guide, Stones vision has all the sentiment of a golf-based office motivational poster. "The World Saw Evil That Day. Two Men Saw Something Else," is the tag line, the bookend "A True Story - Of Courage and Survival". In between is a Franklin Mint-worthy load of rippling American flags, shafts of sunlight piercing dusty ruins and running children being clasped to bosoms, set to a soundtrack apparently by Hallmark. An unembarrassed Cage lip-bites, jaw-clenches and nods through lines  like "we're prepared for everything - but not this...there is no plan", before returning to a default expression so hang-dog he could have palsy. It might be premature to make this judgment on the back of a two minute short, but consider this: Kevin Costner and Dennis Quaid were Stone's first thoughts on filling the lead. Five years on, the damage from 9/11 is still being done.