Year: 2006

I remember September 11, 2001 as a normal day like any, when I was inside my room and my mother started calling me to turn on CNN. Knowing her preference for drama, I took my time, even as I had a growing sense of foreboding. I remember regretting this, because as soon as I switched on, I caught the second plane crashing into the World Trade Center, throwing a heap of debris across the opposite side.

Approaching this movie, I understood fully America’s hesitation to show such a sensitive period in their recent history. It is not only considered as a turning point in shaping world foreign policy, but as a story of how quickly the lives of many of their countrymen were so easily snuffed out by the wayward opinions and goals of a misinformed few.

So easily was this achieved, as this movie will so dramatically display.

The ‘protagonists’ as it were, are the US FAA (Federal Aviation Administration), NORAD (North American Air Defense), any of several air traffic control centers involved and finally, the flightcrew and passengers of United Airlines Flight 93.

Much of the 1.5 hour movie deals with the first three, as the FAA struggled mightily to get a handle of what was going on, constantly barraged by information (and misinformation) about hijacked planes, its flights, direction and the occasional plane reported to be hijacked, but was not. Information re these were coursed via traffic control centers across the US, many of which were utterly confused again from planes not responsive to their requests for information, and deciding whether to consider them hijacked or otherwise.

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