United 93

This difficult film of the 9/11 attacks is a difficult film to watch, and a difficult film to categorize. As far as holding the attention, creating a feeling on the inside of one and powerfully affecting, it is a combination of brilliant and very good. Entertaining would be the wrong word though. One has never felt to uncomfortable before, wishing that one didn't HAVE to keep watching, so to speak.
This film is especially tightly involving, almost unbearably so, in the moments before the hijackers have taken hold of the plane. The inevitability of what will happen, and of course the tragic results we all know, makes one just want to wish that it happens as quickly as possible, that the horror will just go away. When it does, the film does lose a certain of its brutal affect on the vital organs. Not that it turns into a predictable or boring film after this, just not that it quite grips in the way it did.
The air traffic control scenes are the tight and fast moments at first which involve, the film is well paced as these give way to the scenes from inside flight 93.
The Greengrass wobbly camera game is so well played that one does not even notice it. The claustrophobic locations are well done, one has the sense of a wider world outside that is at once complex and unfeeling.
So, this is a tension-filled piece of cinema, with much of its tightness gained from our foreknoweldge of what must happen. It treats the issue fairly and non-mawkishly by not really getting involved in debates (not much, at least). An important film.