Paul Greengrass reconstructs the events aboard United Airlines Flight 93 on September 11, 2001, using a real-time approach that follows the flight from boarding to its final minutes.
What is United 93 about?
The film follows the passengers and crew of Flight 93 alongside air traffic controllers and military personnel on the ground, cross-cutting between the cockpit, the cabin and control rooms as the scale of the day's hijackings becomes clear. Greengrass builds the film almost entirely from procedure and reaction rather than exposition, relying on handheld camerawork and a mostly unfamiliar cast to keep the focus on events as they were understood in the moment rather than on any single lead character. The film ends with the passengers' attempt to retake control of the aircraft before it crashed near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
About the cast
The cast is led by performers largely unknown to mainstream audiences at the time, including J.J. Johnson, Polly Adams, Trish Gates, Nancy McDoniel, Starla Benford, Gary Commock, Opal Alladin and Susan Blommaert, a casting choice that keeps attention on the events depicted rather than on recognisable stars.
Context & significance
A co-production between France, the United Kingdom and the United States, United 93 was among the first major dramatisations of the September 11 attacks to reach cinemas, arriving less than five years after the events it depicts. Paul Greengrass researched the film extensively with the families of those on board and with air traffic control staff who were on duty that day, and the finished film is generally discussed as a restrained, procedural account rather than a dramatised thriller. The production avoided a conventional score for much of its runtime and shot many scenes in near-continuous takes, choices that reviewers at the time linked to its documentary-like tone rather than to typical historical-drama pacing.
Watching United 93 on Ktime
United 93 streams on K-Time with a free account login, presented in its original English audio without a Persian dub or subtitle track. The film can be found through K-Time's Farsi-language interface alongside the rest of the historical drama catalogue.