Let’s face it, you’re going to be innundated by all things 9/11 today, so I’m only going to second Ed Miller‘s recommendation of United 93, now available on DVD.

Despite some ongoing complaints about the characterization of a German passenger on board the flight, the film managed to do what World Trade Center and Flight 93 couldn’t—not suck.

For the last act of the film I actually felt like I was on board that fateful flight.

Wow.

If, like me, you saw Oliver Stone’s World Trade Center over the weekend, you’d probably find it hard to believe that the same guy who wrote Salvador and directed Natural Born Killers could even be capable of making such a mediocre film. Chalk it up to these scary times we live in, I guess…

Most of the reviews out there have been glowingly positive, but I suspect that’s more than anything a safety against angry readers who would confuse a bad review of the film with some kind of dismissal of the actual event.

Here’s the truth: WTC is first a mere dramatization of far more compelling documentary footage from inside Tower One, then an only slightly higher stakes version of My Dinner with André, then some really bad schmaltz on par with the retchid M.O.W. about doomed United Flight 93, then finally a feel-good happy ending teaching us that in adversity humans actually help each other… Well, I should certainly hope so!

Oh sorry, did I spoil the ending for you? You probably won’t want to read any further then…

Any film school professor will tell you that if you render your two main characters immobile underneath a pile of rubble then you’d better have some pretty compelling dialogue between them. This movie didn’t. And instead of putting the audience in the middle of the action and showing them the horror of being buried alive we inexplicably cut to the subs, where the victims’ families are at each other’s throats about petty, stupid things. I didn’t feel a lick of compassion for any of them.

I wish now more than ever I made time to see the theatrical feature about Flight 93 while it was still playing… Maybe I was fearful that it would have been just as bad—or worse, just as safe.

As someone who’s hopefully going to spend about 30 hours in the air during the next couple of weeks, I guess I should be thankful that the latest terror plot was foiled. But the resulting mayhem that I’ve been watching on TV all evening has instead prompted this quick reality check.

Here’s what we’ve given up since 9/11:

1. All kinds of personal freedoms, like the right to an untapped phone conversation, for example.
2. The ability to not be treated like a criminal when boarding a plane, or getting off of one.
3. Any kind of respect or even tolerance of Muslim culture and people, the vast majority of whom are actually not members of Al-Quaeda.

And here, best as I can tell, is what we’ve gained:

1. Oil that we’re paying through the nose for in money and blood.
2. Some very questionable ethics in the treatment of our accused enemies.
3. The “privilege” of having our soldiers blown up in faraway places.

I don’t know about you, but it seems to me like we’re getting our asses kicked here!

We think that when we kill enough Canadians, they will quit.

… Works for me!

Look, all I’m gonna say on the subject is this: Western media isn’t doing itself any favours towards those who believe in Islam.

Exhibit A: The above political cartoon, published in a Danish newspaper last fall. In reading through viewpoints from both the West and Middle East it seems to me that the argument boils down to freedom of speech versus respect—or to put it another way, how many of you Christians out there would like to see a Donato cartoon featuring Jesus soliciting a handjob from a Jarvis Street tranny hooker? Even as political commentary? … Not so much, huh?

Exhibit B: Flightplan, the movie that made me lose all respect for Jodie Foster. When her daughter suddenly goes missing on a transatlantic flight, Ms. Foster’s character is inexplicably allowed to run screaming with arms akimbo up and down the cabin. And on whom does she bestow the title of “kidnapper”? Why three Arabs, of course!

Cut to the end of the movie where she passes one of them again on the tarmac, and instead of apologizing for her xenophobic behavour it’s the Arab dude who, with a hangdog expression, helps her with a piece of her luggage to make amends… For being an Arab, I suppose?!

Exhibit C: The absolutely dreadful Flight 93 on TV last week. In addition to raising more questions than it answers—so where was the United States Air Force during the 9/11 attacks, anyway?—the movie decides that the terrorists on board the doomed flight wore red kamikaze bandanas, just like those damn Japs in WWII. Ugh… Sorry folks, but suggesting that the despicable acts of 9/11 were carried out by cartoon villains is an insult to the lives that were lost on that flight.

You know, If there’s one thing I’ve learned from my years in showbiz, it’s that once you lose an audience, you never get them back. Just a little something to keep in mind…