The Greatest Movies We Never Want to See Again: ‘United 93′

Director Paul Greengrass used black box recordings from doomed United flight 93 to recreate the story, as faithfully as possible, of what took place on that plane on September 11, 2001. The unsettling elements are obvious: we know the outcome of this story, but you can't help but hope that it will somehow be different this time. That's the magic of movies -- the ability to escape into a world where new endings can be fabricated and history can be rewritten. But Greengrass relays the story with the most factual details available, using the passengers' final phone calls to loved ones aboard the plane to recreate one of our nation's most horrific tragedies. Terrorists board a plane heading for Washington, D.C., but instead of resigning themselves to certain death, the passengers unite to take down the terrorits, attempting to avert as much death and destruction as possible. It's a moving, emotional story about people coming together under the most dire circumstances, but it's also an incredibly intense film. Greengrass doesn't flinch away from portraying the events as straight-forward as possible, never once trying to dilute the story with Hollywood artifice, and instead giving us a glimpse inside an event we could never possibly experience first-hand.