Review of Flight 93 (2006) by Alison O — 10 Mar 2007

Best in Show: Jeffrey Nordling.

One for the future: Jeffrey Nordling.

Stand-out scene: Courageous climax in cockpit.

Brainer or no-brainer: Brainer.

Stands up to one viewing or repeated?: Repeated.

DVD commentary any good?: n/a.

DVD.

I had this queued up on Lovefilm for a while and when it finally arrived I realised that it wasn't the Paul Greengrass movie (United 93 - Flight 93 was its working title) after all but a made for American TV effort. It wasn't the opening credits that made the penny drop, but I remember reading an article where the relatives of the real passengers commented on the movie and one said that her brother wasn't wearing a rugby shirt on the plane. With no rugby attire in sight by the time the major characters were established I realised my mistake (D'OH!) That said, the mistake was serendipitous as this was a moving, above average TV movie. It's made me more eager to see the Greengrass version but it is certainly worth watching. This version concentrates on the stories of one of the pilots, the passengers and the passengers' relatives and while the teleplay does indeed occasionally cross over into melodrama (i'm thinking The Lord's Prayer scene) the filmmakers largely rein in the over-egging in favour of a matter-of-fact depiction of the events. Even though as a viewer you know precisely how things are going to pan out there's an understated dignity here in depicting the passengers'/crew's decision to down the plane that in a lesser director's hands would have been saccharinely disrespectful to the real story. Keifer Sutherland narrated the docudrama on the subject and I should imagine that the Greengrass version is more of a quasi-documentary than this offering. Having seen the TV docudrama of the events in the World Trade Centre on September 11, i'd describe this as a worthy companion piece. With all the conspiracy theories flying around (was the plane shot from the sky before it reached The White House?) it's worth remembering that the bottom line is September 11th 2001 was the day a lot of innocent people lost their lives and their families are living with that loss to this day.