Films Taking on 9/11 and the Aftermath

There haven't been a ton of films that have taken on the actual events of 9/11 (of course, it's still a fairly recent event). I was not a fan of Oliver Stone's overly melodramatic World Trade Center. The one film that gets it exactly right, though, is British auteur Paul Greengrass' 2006 thriller United 93. The film follows the flight that was headed towards Washington on 9/11 but crashed in Pennsylvania. United 93 has no known actors. In fact, many of those in the control tower in the film were the actual people in the control tower on 9/11. The film takes place in REAL TIME. It begins when the plane takes off, and it ends as the plane crashes, in the exact amount of time that the horrific events actually took place. In my opinion, it was the best film of 2006 for so many reasons. Many more films have been made about the aftermath of 9/11. Some, like Alex Gibney's 2007 documentary feature Taxi to the Dark Side, have taken on the issues of the ethics (or the lack thereof) of United States interrogation techniques with suspected terrorists. Interestingly enough, the CIA is being exposed by the current Obama administration just this week for the acts of torture that are investigated candidly in this film. Although Afghanistan was the original center of the war on terror, as we all know the war spread into Iraq in 2003 although there was no connection between Iraq and 9/11 (as Taxi to the Dark Side touches on incidently). Since then, many films have taken on the major, yet oftentimes ignored, challenges American soldiers specifically face in Iraq. Although there have been several films on the subject, none to me does a better job than the little seen but extremely powerful 2007 film by director Paul Haggis In the Valley of Elah. No film that I know of does a better and more accurate job of explaining the current situation and Iraq and why current events are taking place there like Charles Ferguson's 2007 documentary feature No End in Sight. Finally, we never should forget the horrors and challenges that Iraqi civilians currently face, and the film that does the best job of explaining that is James Longley's 2006 documentary feature Iraq in Fragments. The trailers for these films can be viewed below.