September 11th United 93 Movie Very Powerful

My wife and I went to see the movie “United 93” today and it almost tore my heart out reliving the events of September 11th, 2001. This terrible day happened at the same time my father was in the final stages of death from “pancreatic cancer”. Those days were so traumatic to me because I was living through two tragedies at the same time. One was the death of my father and the other was the death of the United States of America as I had always known it. I knew in my gut that folks in this country were going to lose freedoms because of this attack and I knew that none of us would be able to take our personal safety for granted ever again.

I thought the “United 93” movie was very well done and the way it flashed between what was happening on that flight and other events around the country that proceed it was carefully woven into a movie. While this movie was hard to watch, it was very informative about that terrible day in American history. When I was a kid, adults use to always talk about where they were and what they were doing when they first heard that JFK had been shot in Dallas. Like the adults before me, I remember exactly the time when my wife came into our bedroom while I was still asleep and told me that terrorist had attacked New York and Washington and that both World Trade Center towers had collapsed.

When I first heard this news I thought I was still asleep and dreaming about what she was telling me, but after viewing the replay on television, I knew that this was no dream but a real life nightmare of gigantic proportions. For the next week to ten days, I don’t think I slept at all. Between trying to make sure Dad was comfortable and watching the latest breaking news on television, these days forever changed my life. To this day I am still at a loss to understand how these folks could do what they did on September 11th. I’ve always thought of myself as a real world kind of person who didn’t get caught by surprise by daily events. However, 911 caught me totally by surprise and five years later I’m still trying to understand why that day happened the way it did.

To me, “United 93” the movie was done in more of a documentary way rather than a regular movie with million dollar special effects. I’m so glad that the movie director decided to take this path when making the film. While there were some scenes, which were filled with graphic violence, nothing I saw on the big screen was more shocking than the actual events I watched on television that horrible day. My wife and I saw this movie at our local dollar theater to a packed house. Maybe folks just wanted to wait and see this movie at a discount or it took them several weeks to get up the nerve to see it at all.

No matter what the various reasons might be, I’m glad we saw this movie today and when you’re ready I hope you will see it too. When we were leaving the theater today, I told me wife that “United 93” will be a blockbuster on DVD when it is released because some folks don’t want to see this movie around other people. To millions of Americans, 911 is still a very emotional and private issue even five years after the attacks first took place.