David Denby: United 93 ‘A Tremendous Experience Of Fear, Bewilderment, And Resolution’
Why so many United 93 posts? Two reasons: (1) I love movies, and (2) this appears to be a respectful, well-made movie about the defining (public) event of my lifetime. David Denby of the New Yorker just flat-out raves:
Greengrass’s movie is tightly wrapped, minutely drawn, and, no matter how frightening, superbly precise. In comparison with past Hollywood treatments of Everyman heroism in time of war, such as Hitchcock’s hammy “Lifeboat,” or more recent spectacles, like “War of the Worlds,” there’s no visual or verbal rhetoric, no swelling awareness of the Menace We All Face. Those movies were guaranteed to raise a lump in our throats. In this retelling of actual events, most of our emotion is centered in the pit of the stomach. The accumulated dread and grief get released when some of the male passengers, shortly after those few words are spoken, rush the hijackers stationed at the front of the plane with the engorged fury of water breaking through a dam.
United 93 is only opening on 1,700 screens (about 40% of what an expected blockbuster opens on), but I’m going to make a prediction. This movie is going to be much, much bigger than most people think it is. The smart money right now is on a $19 million opening weekend…but the smart money’s wrong. You heard it here first – $27.5 million weekend is my prediction…and it will play in 2,200 theaters in week number two on the way to a $24 million second weekend (hey, why not? It’s not like anyone will remember if I’m wrong – but you can bet I’ll remind you if I’m right!)…
I will be there as soon as it is released. I think you are dead on Mark. This movie will be huge. People want to remember what so many brave Americans did that day. People need to be reminded who are enemy is and what they are capable of.
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