The Discerning Texan
All that is necessary for evil to triumph, is for good men to do nothing.
-- Edmund Burke
-- Edmund Burke
Saturday, April 29, 2006
Another SUPERB United 93 review
I still have not seen the film yet, so I am holding back my own review and emotions about seeing the film until I have. But I have read several excellent reviews on the film now, including the one I highlighted the other day by Todd Beamer's father, this one in the Dallas Morning News, and--today--this excellent work by patriotic wordsmith Rick Moran. Although it is doubtful that a leftist bunch like the Motion Picture Academy will give this film the respect and accolades it is no doubt due (signt unseen), this may be the most important film to come out of Hollywood since 9/11. Finally a film to remind Americans what we are up against.
And to the ostriches who are crying "too soon, too soon...", I say: act like grown-ups for goodness sake. We Americans can no longer afford to pretend that the peril that is really out there facing us isn't real; it IS real, and the sooner Americans wake up to that fact, the better. Films like 'Untied 93' are enormously important towards that end.
Rick Moran highlights that sentiment in his fine review, of which a sampling is reproduced below (there is much more--read it all here):
There is a moment in the film United 93 where director Paul Greengrass takes a small step backward from the unrelenting intimate universe into which he has boldly thrust the audience and allows a glimmer of the larger truth of September 11 to be revealed.
Having committed themselves to their heroic effort to take back the cockpit, the passengers are in position in the back of the plane, the larger, stronger men occupying the first three rows closest to the terrorists. Then, it hits you. The look on their faces as they steel themselves to make the attempt mirrors exactly the looks on the faces of the hijackers just prior to their attack as the terrorists also had to summon up the courage to carry out their dastardly deed.
Whether intended or not, Greengrass reveals the faces of men at war. And even though there are no grand, overarching truths about humanity, or good and evil, or the superiority of one set of beliefs over another in U-93 (there is a short scene toward the end of the film that shows both passengers and terrorists praying), the singular fact that “they” attacked us and “we” fought back cannot be denied, cannot be hidden despite the desperate attempt by some over the last 5 years to do so. We are at war.
For those who insist that we are not, that the War on Terror is some gigantic plot of the Bush Administration to win elections, or seize power, or exercise some kind of monarchical control over the American people, United 93 at bottom, shows this kind of 9/10 thinking to be seriously deluded.
Indeed, there has been an attempt by many on the left to make war on the War on Terror itself, as if the enemy is not fanatical Muslims hell bent on killing Americans but rather a domestic ideology that seeks to prevent such a catastrophe. For at bottom, what many on the left seek to obscure is the simple necessity of acknowledging that a conflict exists in the first place.
On an existential level, they can deny the reality of war by turning cause and effect on its head - justifying terrorism as a logical outgrowth of US policies in the Middle East or toward Muslims in general. It is this intellectual dishonesty that is successfully countered by U-93 in its brutally simple yet deeply emotional subtext: a reminder of what it was like to be an American that day.
And to the ostriches who are crying "too soon, too soon...", I say: act like grown-ups for goodness sake. We Americans can no longer afford to pretend that the peril that is really out there facing us isn't real; it IS real, and the sooner Americans wake up to that fact, the better. Films like 'Untied 93' are enormously important towards that end.
Rick Moran highlights that sentiment in his fine review, of which a sampling is reproduced below (there is much more--read it all here):
There is a moment in the film United 93 where director Paul Greengrass takes a small step backward from the unrelenting intimate universe into which he has boldly thrust the audience and allows a glimmer of the larger truth of September 11 to be revealed.
Having committed themselves to their heroic effort to take back the cockpit, the passengers are in position in the back of the plane, the larger, stronger men occupying the first three rows closest to the terrorists. Then, it hits you. The look on their faces as they steel themselves to make the attempt mirrors exactly the looks on the faces of the hijackers just prior to their attack as the terrorists also had to summon up the courage to carry out their dastardly deed.
Whether intended or not, Greengrass reveals the faces of men at war. And even though there are no grand, overarching truths about humanity, or good and evil, or the superiority of one set of beliefs over another in U-93 (there is a short scene toward the end of the film that shows both passengers and terrorists praying), the singular fact that “they” attacked us and “we” fought back cannot be denied, cannot be hidden despite the desperate attempt by some over the last 5 years to do so. We are at war.
For those who insist that we are not, that the War on Terror is some gigantic plot of the Bush Administration to win elections, or seize power, or exercise some kind of monarchical control over the American people, United 93 at bottom, shows this kind of 9/10 thinking to be seriously deluded.
Indeed, there has been an attempt by many on the left to make war on the War on Terror itself, as if the enemy is not fanatical Muslims hell bent on killing Americans but rather a domestic ideology that seeks to prevent such a catastrophe. For at bottom, what many on the left seek to obscure is the simple necessity of acknowledging that a conflict exists in the first place.
On an existential level, they can deny the reality of war by turning cause and effect on its head - justifying terrorism as a logical outgrowth of US policies in the Middle East or toward Muslims in general. It is this intellectual dishonesty that is successfully countered by U-93 in its brutally simple yet deeply emotional subtext: a reminder of what it was like to be an American that day.
