United 93

Didn’t have a particular reason to watched this movie, but I guess I was just curious. 9-11 occured on a random morning while I was still in bed in my dorm room on my freshman year. It was quite a shocking event, and at first I didn’t even know what to think. Anyway, the movie was quite touching, and is worth watching to see the brave men and women of flight 93.

Official Site
IMDb: 8.1/10 (2,642 votes)
Yahoo! Movies: The Critics: A- / Yahoo! Users: B+
Rotten Tomatoes: Rating: 93% / Average Rating: 8.4/10
Apple Trailer
Amazon.com DVD

Spoilers: (Show)

There’s no real reason why the summary should be considered a spoiler. Everyone knows the story, and if you don’t, than you better have a good reason. The story revolves around Flight 93 of United flying from Boston to San Francisco. Flight 93 just lifted off when the 1st plane crashed into the North tower of the World Trade Center. The 2nd and 3rd crash (South Tower and then Pentagon) occured after the Flight 93 was already hi-jacked. The passengers onboard called home and found out about the events as they occurred and decided to try to take back the plane. This resulted in the crash landing of the plane.

Something I didn’t get was why the terrorists allowed them to make phone calls. Maybe the movie didn’t depict it out as well, but they were making phone calls initially in secret, but later in the open. I guess since they couldn’t utilize the bomb, and razor blades don’t exactly have long range, the guy merely tried to stop them from entering the cockpit.

The story was touching and it felt painful to see that happen again.

During the movie, the 1st officer was shouting mayday into his headset and that got me thinking about where the term mayday came from. From Wikipedia: Mayday is an emergency code word used internationally as a distress signal in voice procedure communications, derived from the French m’aider. It is used to signal a life-threatening emergency by many groups, such as police forces, pilots, the fire brigade, and transportation organizations. The call given three times (mayday, mayday, mayday…) in a row indicates significant danger (for example, a threat to life).