Tonight I had the opportunity to catch United 93 down at the local theater. Driving home I kept thinking about how I was going to describe this movie for all of you. I guess I don't really need to go into the story too much as we all know it by now.

Islamic extremists capture the plane. Courageous passengers fight back. Plane crashes during the struggle. Fin.

Going into the movie I expected to have my emotions tweaked. Anger, resentment, sadness, fury...I felt all of these things. What I wasn't prepared for, however, was just how emotional I got. I was not expecting to be affected so profoundly, and yet I was.

I can tell you that I am not an emotional person. I did not cry when Old Yeller died. I do not cry at weddings or even funerals. All of the usual cliches about emotionally constipated males can probably be applied to me, and yet tonight as I sat in the theater - muscles tensed and hanging onto my seat's arm rests for dear life as I rooted, in vain, for the passengers to take the plane back and land safely - I found myself fighting back tears.

I wasn't blubbering, mind you, but the urge to cry was there. I did mist up a little bit, and...that wasn't something I was expecting. It would probably be fair to say that most of us here in America are perhaps suffering - consciously or not - from a little bit of 9/11 burnout. We talk about it all the time, especially when we talk about politics. We see the imagery, still, everywhere. We even still get some of the endlessly forwarded 9/11 conspiracy theory emails once in a while. We all know what happened that day. It was a profound event that has reshaped the world we live in, yet words like "World Trade Center" and "September 11th" have become just that...words. They no longer evoke the feelings they once did.

Yet, this movie brought it all home once again.

Not everyone will probably react as I did. Some will probably see the movie through the eyes of political cynicism, and others may interpret it as a jingoist call-to-arms against Muslims. But whatever one's reaction, what is clear is that this is an important movie. Mostly because it is a fair movie. There was no political agenda present and no creative liberties taken with the story to "spice it up" for audiences. It is an accurate portrayl of some specific events on a terrible, terrible day for this country, and it is definetly something every American should see if only to re-kindle the memory of 9/11 and force us to remember why the fight against Islamic extremism in the middle east is so very, very important.

If I had one complaint about the movie it would be about the camera work. The whole film was shot with that bumpy, jerky, in-focus-out-of-focus, artsy-fartsy camera method that left me feeling a little queasy about 1/4 of the way into the movie. Sometimes I wish these directors would quit trying to be so cute with their shots and just point their cameras at the things they want to record and then record them.

I went to this movie tonight because a lot of people were talking about it and I wanted to see it for myself, but also because I wanted write about it for Say Anything. Before I saw it I wasn't planning to focus so much on how it made me feel because, really, that's what everybody is talking about after seeing this movie. I wanted to approach it from a fresh angle. I wasn't sure what that would be, but I didn't want to write another "the 9/11 movie made me cry" piece.

And I guess I haven't. I've written a "the 9/11 movie almost made me cry" piece.

But what are you gonna do?