Why anyone would want to revisit the dreadful day of Sept. 11, 2001, is beyond this particular critic. But those who find meaning and catharsis by watching fetishistically accurate reenactments on the big screen will be well rewarded by "United 93," Paul Greengrass's taut thriller that, minute by agonizing minute, follows the only plane not to reach its target, the passengers having overtaken the aircraft in a breathtaking act of collective heroism.

With an outstanding cast of anonymous-looking character actors, Greengrass engages in uncannily convincing speculation about who said and did what that day, beginning with the early morning prayers of the four hijackers and the banal banter of the passengers and crew. Intercut with scenes from air traffic control towers in New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts, Ohio and Virginia, as well as the Northeast Air Defense Sector headquarters, "United 93" unfolds with the terrible inevitability of a modern-day "Battle of Algiers," with Greengrass exerting superb control of tone, structure and pace. To his credit, he avoids politics altogether, focusing instead on the tick-tock of how reality slowly dawned on an improbably gorgeous late summer morning. "United 93" may be the best movie I ever hated.

-- Ann Hornaday

Contains profanity and intense sequences of terror and violence.