United 93: Critic Reviews

[Paul Greengrass] keeps a cataclysmic story scaled to the vulnerable men and women involved.

... beat for beat, the whole thing plays out very much according to the Hollywood playbook.

It is the film of the year. I needed to lie down in a darkened room afterwards. So will you.

It is undeniably the most gut-wrenching and captivating film released this year.

United 93 may be the best movie I ever hated.

... you come out feeling that the filmmakers have done the right thing by this day.

Like most memorials, it is respectful, premised on competing obligations to the dead and the living, and eager to stress that the deaths were not in vain. It not only tells us we should never forget but also illustrates how we should remember.

It is a docudrama done with great sensitivity, and with unerring judgment in the writing and in the depiction of the passengers and hijackers.

Greengrass' own formidable version brings [the story of United Airlines Flight 93] to life -- and to death -- with a bluntness and nobility that are almost too hard to bear.

United 93 is an exhausting but commanding work of art.

... in telling the story of the one terrorist-commandeered jet that did not hit its target on Sept. 11, 2001, United 93 does so much right.

With events as well known as these, Greengrass doesn't need to sensationalize. The film is more powerful when he un -sensationalizes.

A few people made extraordinary use of those tormented minutes, and United 93 fully honors what was original and spontaneous and brave in their refusal to go quietly.

To watch United 93 is to be confronted with the grim chaotic reality of that autumn day in 2001.

The film is lean, harsh and remarkably free of cant.

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.

There's no way to watch United 93, Paul Greengrass' heartbreaking, pulse-pounding drama about the lone hijacked commercial airliner that failed to reach its target on Sept. 11, 2001, and not anticipate the dreadful outcome.

United 93 doesn't provide tidy answers or emotional catharsis, but it is a courageous exploration of painful issues.

This is art engaging grim reality in the hope of perspective, understanding and perhaps even closure.

It's hard to imagine any American not being moved by this film.

Even the undeniable heroism of the passengers on United 93 doesn't edify as it should.

... United 93 is an exemplary attempt to relive history, inspired and powerful.

Taut, visceral and predictably gut-wrenching.

For me, Paul Greengrass' meticulously researched movie was a deeply cathartic experience.

It is a movie that takes us where we don't want to go but need to.