Airsick.

United 93

* Directed by Paul Greengrass

* Ensemble cast * Universal

Want to be plunged face-first into one of the saddest, worst days of your life? Do you enjoy the emotional pornography of watching people who are about to die make tearful phone calls to their loved ones? Did you ever want to rewatch that CNN footage of the planes hitting the World Trade Center, only on a really, really big screen?

Then United 93 is the movie for you. But I would rather have never had to sit through this dramatic reenactment of the hijacked flight that crashed in Pennsylvania on 9/11. While it's competently made--director Paul Greengrass previously worked his shaky-cam, faux doc aesthetic in Bloody Sunday and The Bourne Supremacy--United 93 is repellent. Less than five years after this horrible incident, do we re ally need to see it recrafted as popular entertainment? What this film has to say, we either already know--planes were hijacked by terrorists and slammed into buildings--or can never know--the Flight 93 passengers' vaunted retaliation against the terrorists, which is supposedly why the plane crashed and missed its target, is based entirely on speculation. Add to that the "Christians good, Muslims bad" subtext of the movie and a closing title that exonerates Bush while subtly blaming the Air Force for not shooting down planes, and the whole enterprise makes one's skin crawl.

For all the talk about how the victims' families support the film and that the movie is a testament to their lives, the passengers--including gay rugby player Mark Bingham (played by out actor Cheyenne Jackson)--mainly come off as nameless ciphers until they're cast in the role of action heroes. Better that they be remembered for their real lives and deeds than for this manipulative snuff film.