Terror at the Multiplex?

A graphic, compelling, mesmerizing and question-raising film that, even in all of its artful horror, can only begin to imitate life.

Investigative Unit producer Jill Rackmill reported extensively on 9/11 and United 93 and attended the screening of the controversial movie in New York Tuesday night.

The mood outside Manhattan’s historic Ziegfeld Theater Tuesday night at Tribeca Film Festival’s world premiere of the movie "United 93" was an uneasy mix of excitement, anticipation and dread. How difficult would this movie be to watch? Is it supposed to entertain us? To educate us? Should this movie even have been made?

The evening had the trappings of any movie premiere – the black limos, the jockeying, flashing paparazzi, the red carpet. But the stars of the night were not the movie’s mostly-unknown actors, nor the important New York City officials in attendance, nor even the Hollywood celebrities who showed up (Gabriel Byrne, Julia Stiles and Steve Buscemi, to name a few).

The evening’s real guests of honor were the family members of passengers who died on United 93, many of whom sat in the audience and wholeheartedly support the controversial film. The movie was dedicated to them — and was made, according to Gordon Felt, brother of passenger Edward P. Felt, "so that the lessons learned in their sacrifice can last forever."

The movie takes place in almost-real time on the morning of September 11th. From the opening shot of four hijackers in a dingy motel room reading from the Koran to the closing image shot through the spiraling plane’s cockpit window as the brown and green Pennsylvania earth comes closer and closer, United 93 the movie is an agonizing dramatization of an agonizing day.

But the most painful part of the movie did not appear on the silver screen itself. As the final shot faded to black and the credits began to roll, the theater reverberated with the moaning, wracking, heaving sobs of the family members, seated mostly in the Ziegfeld’s balcony. Powerful feats of cinematic glory can do much to transport us to other worlds, but no Dolby-stereo sound system could ever faithfully recreate the real cries of those still-hurting souls.

United 93 is a mesmerizing and meticulous piece of filmmaking. Shot in a shaky, hand-held, hyperkinetic style, at times it feels like a documentary, with scenes inside simulated air traffic control centers, the Northeast Air Defense Sector, and, of course, the now-menacing United Airlines Boeing 757 itself.

Filmmaker Paul Greengrass has an astoundingly accurate eye for detail, down to the mundane routines that bleary-eyed passengers on a morning flight go through – a young woman applies lip balm, a businessman turns the pages of that day’s newspaper, a stewardess describes the contents of a breakfast omelet. All of these normal, everyday rituals are almost unbearable to watch, knowing what will eventually befall the passenger and crew.

"Here we go," say the pilots as they back away from the gate – and the inevitable unfolds. The story itself is, of course, painfully seared into history’s memory, but as movie viewers in a darkened theater we once again relive that day: first one plane, then another, hits the World Trade Center, then the Pentagon is in flames, then yet another plane is reported missing.

Many ordinary people – air traffic controllers, passengers, flight attendants – behaved extraordinarily that day, and their acts are honored by their on-screen portrayals.   But many ordinary people were overwhelmed by extraordinary events that day, and their fumbles, miscommunications, helplessness and slowness to react are painfully frustrating to watch.

The scenes of the actual hijack of United 93 are the most graphic and terrifying to watch. It is a dark exercise, but one can only imagine what they would have been like to be a passenger, let alone one brave enough to overthrow the hijackers in an attempt to seize control of the cockpit.

We will never know exactly what happened in the final moments of United 93′s flight. Did the brave passengers wrestle the hijackers to the ground, using judo training, boiling water and fire extinguishers as weapons?  Did they rip the "bomb" off a hijacker’s chest, only to discover that it was a fake, made of clay and wires?  Did the passengers breach the cockpit?  As true as this movie is to life, in the end, it is still a movie and many things that will remain forever unknown are filled in by fictionalizations.

Surprisingly, some real-life known details are left out of the movie entirely.  As someone who reported extensively on the hijacking of United 93, and produced an exclusive story using air traffic control recordings from that day, I was surprised that the hijacker Ziad Jarrah’s own spoken transmissions – "Hi this is the captain.  We’d like you all to remain seated.  There is a bomb aboard" – were not included in the movie’s narrative. Jarrah’s chilling transmissions are one of the few things that we know for a fact came out of the mouth of a 9/11 hijacker.

In talking with Greengrass after the movie, he explained the omission by saying it wasn’t useful for the “storytelling” to return to the air traffic control center on the ground in Cleveland.  That’s Hollywood.

Universal Pictures announced that 10 percent of the opening weekend’s profits will be donated to the Flight 93 National Memorial project. Generous, yes – but it begs the questions, why just the opening weekend? Why just 10 percent?

In all, the filmmakers deserve credit for honoring the memory of those lost on United 93, for telling the story straight down the middle with very little politics, and for never, ever slipping into melodrama in the telling of this tragic day.

With material like this, you don’t have to.