Like many other readers, I saw "United 93" this weekend. I have very mixed feelings about the movie.

First, it's actually two movies in one. One movie is about 9/11 from the perspective of NORAD, the FAA and air traffic controllers around the country. The other movie happens aboard United 93. The film unfolds in real time, so I think the ground story is told to help us understand the timing of what going on in the air. The problem is that until the last 20 minutes or so of the movie, the stuff happening on the ground is so much more interesting than what's happening on United 93. When the scene shifts to a flight attendant serving breakfast, I just got impatient (one thing this movie shows is that there are so many good 9/11 stories to be told. For example, I'd go to a movie just about the air traffic controllers that day.).

Frankly, the early "air" story is a little boring. The filmmakers were so determined to shed any Hollywood "emotion" from their movie that they don't do any kind of character development. The film is cast with relative unknowns, although sharp-eyed viewers will see Christian Clemenson (Socrates from Brisco County, Jr.) as would-be pilot Tom Burnett and Peter Hermann (he played the scientist who cloned Reva on Guiding Light, but is better known as Law & Order's Mariska Hargitay's real-life husband) as Jeremy Glick. The passengers are never formally identified by name, although most of the audience will recognize Todd Beamer from his baseball hat. In a way, I guess the filmmakers see them as representative Americans. But doesn't that cheat them of some of their heroism? Maybe anyone in that situation would fight back, but that shouldn't diminish the fact that they did.

So, yeah, I wanted to know more about the passengers. But that's my only real complaint about the movie. Even though you know how it's going to end, you still catch yourself wishing so hard for it to turn out differently. It's also a little amazing to me to realize how deeply I hate the terrorists on that plane. I hate them and I fervently hope they're burning in the hottest pit in hell. I read somewhere that the director did 40+ minute long takes in the plane and that afterward the actors playing the terrorists and the passengers broke down and sobbed and embraced. I can believe it. They all commit to their roles. I think that was probably easy to do for people who played heroes, but I applaud the actors who played the terrorists. They played evil and succeeded in making their characters completely unsympathetic. I liked watching the terrorist with the "bomb" go from being in control and threatening to the passengers to being scared to death of them.

I think we've all imagined what the last few minutes on that plane were like. For me, the film captured it. At the end of the day, I think that was the filmmakers' goal. We see the information exchanged and spread through the plane, final calls home, planning and a desperate battle. If you wanted to see this movie, that's what you wanted to see. Or, more accurately, what you needed to see.

All in all, I give the movie a 7.5 out of 10.