Last flight in face of terror

Whether or not you approve of it being made at all, this account of the only hijacked plane on 9/11 that failed to reach its target is a genuinely engrossing achievement.

And we should at least applaud the fact that Working Title, the British production company, and Paul Greengrass, a British director, have made it with such skill and restraint, refusing to sink into the well of easy patriotism or uneasy sentimentality.

The film is based on the official report about 9/11, on the black-box tapes and on evidence provided by families of those who died attempting to disarm the terrorists trying to steer United Airlines flight 93 into the Capitol.

All we know for certain is that some passengers tried to disarm and incapacitate the hijackers, and that the plane went out of control and crashed near Shanksville with no survivors.

When Greengrass supplies his own interpretation of the final moments of the 44 people on board, it's as much intelligent guesswork as fact. This last third of the film, shot with hand-held cameras in real time by cinematographer Barry Ackroyd, produces an almost unbearable tension, although we know how it must end.

As passengers call their loved ones on their mobiles, learn of the other hijacked planes, decide to rebel rather than sit and wait to die and, finally, rush the four increasingly nervous terrorists, we are reminded of Greengrass's prize-winning Bloody Sunday about the 1972 Derry massacre. He knows how to make things very real, and how to avoid either melodrama or special pleading.

One of United 93's strengths is that there are no familiar faces in the cast, and there is no attempt to introduce the characters one by one as in a conventional Hollywood film.

However, even the terrorists are made to seem human, if totally blinded by their cause. Its other strength is the way Greengrass orchestrates the opening, making the start of an ordinary flight from Newark to San Francisco as mundane as it must have seemed to its passengers.

Between this and the final horror, we have what is surely the critical kernel of the film. This is set within the air traffic control centres in Boston, New York and Cleveland, where Ben Sliney, playing himself, was negotiating his first day as manager.

We see the disbelief, hesitancy and increasing panic as one plane after another is reported hijacked and all American airspace is closed. We see America's defence system unprepared and unable even to get its planes into the air. We are told when they finally do, that they can't get a clarification of the rules of engagement.