United 93 (Rhoades)

Tropic Honors 9/11 With Special Showing
Reviewed by Shirrel Rhoades

There’s a reason the Tropic Cinema was voted Best in Florida. The Tropic will commemorate the 10th Anniversary of September 11, the attack on America by Al-Qaeda terrorists by partnering with American Red Cross to show the film “United 93.”

All proceeds from ticket sales go to support the Flight 93 National Memorial.

“United 93” reenacts the heroic sacrifice of passengers on United Flight 93, the airliner which went down in an Pennsylvania field to avoid being used as a flying bomb in an attack on perhaps the United States Capitol.

You will share the fear of passengers when their plane is taken over by four boxcutter-wielding hijackers, listen in on their frantic cell phone calls to family members and others, and feel the triumph of their “Let’s roll” charge on the cockpit, thwarting the terrorists.

“United 93” is an emotionally stirring movie. It puts a focus on the people on the hijacked 757 – from Todd Beamer to Thomas E. Burnett, Jr. to Captain Jason Dahl. No big-name stars, but David Alan Basche, Christian Clemenson, J. J. Johnson, and others deliver the goods.

Written and directed by Paul Greengrass (“Bloody Sunday,” “The Bourne Ultimatum”), this is considered the best of the films based on this tragic event.

While we will never know the actual details of what happened aboard the doomed United flight, this dramatization is designed to make our patriotism bubble to the surface. What we have here is an American myth in the making – a tale of heroism – in which a number of innocent lives are sacrificed to save thousands more. In the past, such a tale would have been told around a campfire, but in modern society we rely the flickering light of television sets and motion picture screens to mourn our loss.

The Tropic’s special showing helps us remember 9/11 and the lives that were lost that day.

srhoades@aol.com
[from Solares Hill]