Americans will jump on any negative cinematic portrayal of themselves as being "biased" and "anti-American", possibly motivated by Communist and/or Al-Qaida sympathies. Lars Von Trier has been verbally lynched by virtually every major American critic for the crime of being a European director who makes films that suggest (oh perish the thought!) that Americans can do bad things.
The on-board victims we see in "United 93" are all based on real people. The Americans are shown as heroes; only one man shrinks from the call to action. He just happens to be German and (apparently) the only European on the flight.
Not a shred of evidence exists to suggest that this man was a coward. Almost nothing is known of his behaviour that day. Nevertheless, his family has had to watch his reputation dragged through the gutter, simply because the film's creators knew very well that Americans would respond well to a European characterised (yet again) as a worthless wimp, no matter how baseless and arbitrary were the reasons to do so.
So much sentimental goop has been oozed out of American pores about the need to "honour the memory" of 9/11 victims, but apparently that duty applies only to the American dead. Upon the graves of the non-American victims, we are quite free to spit, as this film does.
Meanwhile, not a word of protest has been heard from American critics (or anybody, really) about the slander visited upon this innocent dead man.
In a sad irony, this movie unintentionally answers a question many Americans asked themselves on that awful day: "why do so many people hate us?". For a start, because you stroke your bloated egos by defaming others, not hesitating even to desecrate the memory of the innocent dead.
