Antonia Bird has made some daring films, including the cannibal-horror flick Ravenous and the gay-themed Priest, but The Hamburg Cell may be her riskiest work to date, with its daring look at the perpetrators of 9/11, portraying them as human beings with complex and varied motivations, not monsters. Working from a delicate script by Ronan Bennett and Alice Perman, this UK production—made for Britain's Channel 4 and airing in the U.S. on HBO—primarily focuses on Ziad Jarrah, believed to have been the hijacker pilot of United 93, the flight that crashed in Pennsylvania. Perhaps the least likely of the 19 terrorists, Jarrah was a secular Lebanese man who lived with a girlfriend and was apolitical...until, it seems, he was radicalized by encounters with angry anti-American fundamentalists, including Mohamed Atta (played by single-named actor Kamel) and others who would form the small group in Hamburg, Germany that led the 9/11 attacks. Karim Saleh's performance as Jarrah is elegant in its simplicity, gradually moving from indifferent to infuriated; in fact, it's deeply unsettling to come so intimately face to face with the ordinariness of a man who could be a middling student and a shy lover while also conceiving and carrying out one of the most horrific and malevolently ingenious crimes ever committed. Highly recommended. (M. Johanson)
The Hamburg Cell
Acorn, 101 min., not rated, DVD: $19.99, Nov. 14 Volume 22, Issue 1
The Hamburg Cell
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