United 93 is a film about 9/11. It tells the story of the day through a meticulous re-enactment of events surrounding United 93, the last of four hijacked aircraft, in the belief that by examining this single event something much larger can be found - the shape of our world today.

Made with the full support of the families of those on board, United 93 will track in real time the dramatic story of what happened inside the aircraft as well as on the ground.

Nicht alle Familien haben dabei mitgemacht. Die Familie des deutschen Todesopfers Christian Adams wollte dem Film zwar keine Steine in den Weg legen, hat sich darüber hinaus aber bewusst nicht beteiligt. Der damals 37-jährige Wein- und Marketing-Fachmann Adams aus Biebelsheim war auf dem Weg nach Kalifornien, um dort auf einer Messe deutsche Weine zu präsentieren.
Zweimal wird in »Flug 93« deutsch gesprochen: Der Film zeigt einen Christian Adams, der auf Deutsch ruft: »Ich bin Deutscher, ich will nicht sterben!« Die Aufzeichnungen aus dem Flugzeug belegen etwas anderes. Tatsächlich hat einer der Passagiere vor dem Absturz geschrien, er wolle nicht sterben - jedoch auf Englisch.

"One of the most impressive things about Christian was his willingness to dive in and do whatever needed to be done," said Carol Sullivan, director of the German Wine Information Bureau in New York. "No job was ever beneath him."
But through hard work and skillful networking, Adams, 37, of Biebelsheim, Germany, had risen high in the world of wine production and promotion. As deputy director of the German Wine Institute and director of its export department, he was responsible for promoting one of his country's most-prized products. "He was the hub in the wheel," said Sullivan, who represented the institute and worked closely with Adams for a dozen years. "There was no one more interested in wine." Sullivan met Adams in 1989 at a German Wine Society convention in Los Angeles, while he was still a student working on a marketing degree at the University of California, Davis. He'd already obtained a degree in winemaking and grape-growing from a German university and was determined to build a career around wine.

The family and friends of Christian Adams, who have all already suffered more than anyone should ever have to, now face the besmirching of their lost loved one's memory and quite possibly the public accusation of cowardice from the ignorant who will believe that "United 93" is in some way an accurate depiction of what occurred. I was feeling uncomfortable with these September 11th film projects, but now, certainly in the case of Mr Greengrass' fantasy, I feel nothing but utter revulsion.

You're not going to find a movie from a major studio with more integrity than United 93. Made with support of the victims' families, and hewing as close as possible to facts confirmed by the 9/11 commission report, the film isn't a cash-in. There's not an exploitative frame in the picture. It's also not an editorial, and it's most certainly not a Hollywood thriller. (…) At no point during United 93 does it feel like you're watching a movie. It feels like you're there.

A persuasively narrated, scrupulously tasteful re-creation of the downing of the fourth and final plane hijacked by Islamist terrorists on Sept. 11. (…) Drawing on different sources, including the report and family members, Mr. Greengrass follows the same trajectory as the report, with most of the screen time devoted to the period between takeoff and the excruciating moments before the plane crashed. The film carries the standard caution that it is "a creative work based on fact," yet Mr. Greengrass's use of nonfiction tropes, like the jagged camerawork and the rushed, overlapping shards of naturalistic dialogue, invests his storytelling with a visceral, combat-zone verisimilitude. And yet at the same time, beat for beat, the whole thing plays out very much according to the Hollywood playbook. (…) Mr. Greengrass has worked hard to honor the victims, as has the studio releasing the film.

Universal's "United 93," is a respectful, accomplished, non-exploitative piece of historical filmmaking and -- for audiences -- a gripping white-knuckle ride all the way. (…) "United 93" is not a film with a political agenda --it strains to be a sober, somber, straightforward re-creation of the event --…"

A European-accented passenger pointedly makes the case for negotiation - and then, come the storming of the flight deck, attempts to place himself in the way. Given the patriotic legend of flight 93 ("Let's roll," said one passenger, unwittingly launching a tub-thumping Neil Young record, several thousand T-shirts and a catchphrase that crystallised a very American derring-do), this little subplot packs a very hard punch: when the film plays in the US, there will surely be all kinds of cries about old European surrender monkeys, the US's contrasting backbone etc. So, from where did this episode come? As it turns out, nowhere. We know there was a German passenger - one Christian Adams, aged 37 - on board, but that's it. His role in the movie is the product of something several light years away from artistic license, as is proved by the exchange between Greengrass and Kirsty Wark on Thursday's Newsnight:
    KW: There was one passenger [in the film] that actively tried to stop the others going forward. That was the German passenger.
    PG: Erich, the actor who played him, who was German ... One of the interesting things he talked about was Mogadishu [eventual destination of a hijacked Lufthansa flight in 1977], saying that a German passenger of his age would well remember that [and] it would have given him a very clear view that the correct thing to do - and bear in mind that was operating in a pre 9/11 context - was to get the plane down.
    KW: It might be difficult for the German passenger's family, in a sense, to think that he was the one saying: "Hold back, do nothing." You don't know that.
    PG: We don't know, no, but you have to set the parameters of the film as they actually are and explore it, and in the end, audiences have to make their own minds up about whether that's a credible, believable portrait.
By definition, it's not credible; it's not believable either: given passenger Adams's actual age, he would have been eight years old at the time of the Mogadishu hijack. But who cares about that? Thousands of Americans will make their judgments at a stroke. That's how the continental divide works right now. So thanks, Mr Greengrass."

I'm probably going to write a blog before the deadline on the shameful portrayal of a German citizen, Christian Adams, in the film "United 93". He was one of the passengers killed on the flight. The director decided to assign him the role of the one coward among the passengers: first he argues to appease the hijackers by doing nothing, then he panics and attempts to warn the hijackers that the passengers are planning to storm the cabin and seize control of the plane. The actor (also a German, so the intent here is unmistakable) appears at first agitated and disagreeable, then completely out of control.

The director, Paul Greengrass, said the film was based on "meticulous research" and the media picked up on this claim ("thoroughly fact-checked" according to the Hollywood Reporter, and so on). So naturally the viewer assumes there was some factual basis for this portrayal. In fact, there wasn't, as far as I can tell. There's apparently no information in the public record about Adams' behavior during the flight and the entire incident appears to have been manufactured by the director. Greengrass wanted his movie to be a metaphor for the world's response to terrorism: do we do nothing and appease the terrorists, or do we attack them preemptively? So there had to be a character to represent the first option: cowardly appeasement.
Adams was obviously assigned this role -- and it's hardly a coincidence that Greengrass chose the only European citizen on the passenger manifest to play the bad guy, and moreover someone from the "Old Europe" that refused to march into Iraq with the U.S.

If Greengrass had created a fictional character for this role, then one could argue with his politics but not his ethics. But in this case he chose to defame a real human being whose family and friends are still grieving for his loss.
Since Greengrass presented his movie as an historical reconstruction, and this is how most critics perceived the movie, that means Adams will be remembered by millions as the _one_ passenger on Flight 93 who didn't have the courage to fight for his freedom and who endangered the lives of others as a result.
I wish someone would sue Greengrass and NBC Universal (owned by GE, by the way) for gross libel, because I think that's what happened here.

In my review of "United 93" awhile back, I pointed out the strange presence of "a German blond businessman who turns out as a stereotypically weak-kneed Euro-pacifist (an obvious non-American who is eventually neutralized)." The character stands in a stark contrast to the "American heroes" who fight back -- and his stereotypical attitude is finally getting noticed in Europe. (...) It's further evidence of how much the movie panders to American cowboy politics -- and reaffirms both American and E.U. stereotypes.