Flight the Future?

So as Super Tuesday unfolds to the south, I finally got around to watching United 93, Paul Greengrass's superb rendition of the event that's shaped so much of our modern mess. Really, the thought of the pre-Sept. 11 world is pretty remarkable at this juncture. The morass in Iraq, the sabre-rattling toward Iran, the gutting of rights and freedoms in constitutions worldwide - it all might never have happened. But it did. And this film does a remarkable job of capturing that horrifying morning as it unfolded, sans Hollywood histrionics. Without stars or even much in the way of specific characters per se, instead we are confronted with the naked chaos and confusion that reigned from airport control towers to military command centres. And of course the drama and tension as it unfolds on the doomed plane, the passengers going about their quotidian travel unaware. There's no comfort here. Just a witnessing of heinous acts and the blank solace of doomed heroism. It's a sobering instance of how vulnerable our modern life can actually be, how tenuously we rely on everyday people simply doing their jobs, especially when the world turns upside-down.