United 93 Review

Surprisingly good. I like the fairly realistic portrayal of ATC, the NEADS mission control floor, and the FAA crap hittin' the fan. Read Wikipedia's film production notes which describes how many of the actors were actually FAA, ATC, airline, or military personnel playing themselves in the roles. The production notes describe how the director separated the actors playing the hijackers from the rest of the cast until last minute for a more realistic portrayal. I also found an interesting United 93 Crash site that tests other theories.

When watching this film, you can't help but recount 9.11.01 and exactly what you were doing when you received the news about the WTC and the Pentagon. I was actually at home, taking a pro-day from work since I had flown TDY for a mission the entire week prior. Since we didn't have t.v., or radio (I was shut off from the outside world except for telephone), I received news from family via phone calls. Within a few days, I was pulling 12 hour shifts...the night shift, for 4-6 weeks. Steve was on day shift, so we hardly saw each other...and sleeping during the day was just brutal. But, our country was having a crisis, and we wanted to serve and right the wrongs of America's enemies--we wanted to prevent future attacks, and we wanted to make certain our families slept soundly at night. I remember that year that I flew missions and experienced Operation Deny Christmas, and celebrated New Year's in at least 2 times zones while flying through 2 weekdays--I'd forgotten what day it was by the time we landed. But, Homeland Security was launched, the FAA, NORAD, CONR, and a bunch of other acronyms got their acts together after facing an unprecedented blow to American soil. Soon enough, the night shifts required less manpower, the frequent flying missions reduced, and then we geared up to go to war in Iraq.