Hence my disclaimer "Now I am not equating the subject matter or the film styles..."

I'm really just questioning the issue of timeframe from historical event to the film depiction--as you said, 5 years is too soon.

I have a feeling that for many people, it will always be "too soon." (OPA!, you got an idea for when the war on terror will be over?)

And your reply about other historical events depicted in film (or not)...I'm not sure I follow your thinking....Still too soon for these other subjects? Can't make contemporary movies because too many historical events go untouched?

The day the republicans leave office I suppose.

I don't really see a freakout about the film. Is anybody really making a stink about it? Just interested in others' takes. As I get older, my tolerance for visual acts of violence and cruelty has really taken a hit. I know sitting in a theatre and watching would make me physically ill. Not questioning its validity, though.

Hollywood has been capitalizing and drawing on current events for 70 years. For some reason this stuff just doesn't bother me.

I give it 2 years before "INSURGENT LOVE" comes out starring Colin Farrell where he plays a marine fighting the insurgents and he falls in love with an Iraqi woman. As it turns out the woman is the sister to an Iraqi insurgent and the brother shuns her. Their love perists and the marine and insurgent meet and after they overcome their differences they become drinkin buddies thus ending the war.

Alternate title: H.B.I.

No! Sorry if the satire wasn't obvious. I think it's just a way of saying: hey Hollywood/Media Industry, fucking give it some time eh? I mean between this and Oliver Stone's upcoming film...ugh.

I think a minute-by-minute recreation is unecessary at this point - a little too soon. I think it's a better time for movies about dealing with the event, similar to the Jonathan Safron Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. I see this as a better way to cope at this point.

And no, I probably won't see the movie.

I thought that was the plot to the Miami Vice movie.

I don't know, but it's definitely one or the other

I am so checking this out over the weekend. I can understand how some feel it's too soon, but, like seamonster, I think for those people, it will always be too soon.

I just can't see this being very funny, especially without the Zucker brothers attached.

I'd see it.

i'd like to see this movie, but after seeing the trailer for it a few weeks ago at a theatre, i might hold off for a while. i felt/feel very uneasy.

It'd be funny, if while seeing this, terrorists took over the theatre.

i have 0 desire to see this. 0.

I just don't understand how any of the characters in the movie can really develop or stray from the party line that we've been told for 5 years. it's not like there's a chance that the director takes the stance that some of them deserved to die.

and i might plotz if some ruggedly handsome guy turns to the camera and says, gravely, "let's roll".

i guarantee that will happen.

No apparently its really understated. I just wonder if they make it out alive?

there are no good movies playing right now, ugh. thats about all i feel like doing due to this killer hangover I am dealing with.

You really think there's a time that we're not still going to be "dealing with the threat of terrorism."

You've been on fire in this thread.

Heroes never die.

I guarantee there will be an american flag somewhere in the climax of this film.

Most people I've talked with about seeing the film have said they wouldn't want to, and I'm sure you're all hearing the same; that's largely the Obnish opinion as we can see. What's interesting is that the A&E TV movie version of the story called Flight 93, back on 1/30/06, was the highest rated program A&E ever broadcast. So somebody is interested. I do think it's easier for people to choose to watch it on TV than to travel to a theater to see it--you're home, the lights are on, dog's there, you've got your bag of Doritos, Diet Pepsi's holding out nicely. It's much more comforting, safer, than sitting in a dark theater with a film that's guaranteed to put you through the wringer projected 20 feet high in front of you.

I would suspect that a number of the people who might go see United 93 are not admitting it for fear of seeming ghoulish. It's got a lot to do with the different ways people react to tragedy. Just as there are always going to be people who can't bear to look at footage of the planes hitting the towers, there are people who have to submit themselves to the horror to work through it. And I wouldn't say those people are morbid; everybody grieves differently.

At what point does something like Roberto Begnini's Life Is Beautiful become allowable? A comedy (though an artfully done one) set in the Holocaust? It's not that the events of the Holocaust have become any less horrific, but we've got a distance of 50 years on it and not many people question the appropriateness of a Holocaust-themed "entertainment" nowadays--"artfully done" or not. (I mean, Life Is Beautiful is one thing--when does Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS become allowable?)

While researching some of this on the Internet Movie Database, I found out that there was a British TV movie version (looks like it was a "documentary with re-enactments" kind of thing) which was broadcast on Sept. 4, 2002--just under a year after 9/11. But that's a different country, and another example of distance blunting tragedy--it wasn't their country that was attacked, so it's not as much of an open wound over there. I wonder if there's been a similar TV re-enactment of the events of the London bombings and what kind of outcry that would produce in England.


Actually, I wouldn't count the Vietnam movies--the war had been going on for over 10 years by the time it ended in 1975. There were still fresh memories, but for the most part it was old news by then and most people had already worked past their "too soons."

By the way--a mostly forgotten JFK conspiracy thriller called Executive Action opened in November 1973 on the 10th anniversary of the assassination. From the description, it's not all that far from Oliver Stone territory, and includes actual Dallas documentary footage (though not the Zapruder film) in what's probably leagues closer to a standard Hollywood thriller than United 93. I'm sure there were plenty of people who thought that was too soon, too.