Movies This article is more than 17 years oldUnited 93 'surrender monkey' defends role in film
This article is more than 17 years oldUnited 93 has been hailed a powerful memorial to the passengers killed on the fourth plane to be hijacked on September 11 2001, and a rousing salute to the heroic actions of those on board. Of all the passengers portrayed in Paul Greengrass's fact-based film, only one is portrayed as a cautious soul unwilling to attack the terrorists - German businessman Christian Adams.
Now the actor who plays Adams on screen has defended his role in the movie, arguing that his cautious, pacifist stance was in keeping with Adams' own persona. In the film, the German is shown to counsel appeasement, arguing that the passengers are better off doing exactly what they are told.
Actor Erich Redman said that he based his performance on an interview he read with a former colleague of Christian Adams. "He never made any rash decisions and everything he did was always well-considered," he said. "I think he would have said, 'Let's not do this, let's be quiet, let's not interfere with [the terrorists], because once we have landed the authorities will take care of it. I think that's quite a reasonable thing to say." Redman added that Adams was "not one of those gung-ho Americans wanting to storm the cockpit and smash those people's skulls in."
Before embarking on United 93, director Greengrass was careful to secure the support of the victims' families. But Adams' widow, Silke Adams, is believed to have refused to cooperate on the film, saying that the memory of her husband's death was still too raw. This has left the film open to charges that Adams has been set up as the story's fall guy, the token cowardly German amid a band of brave Americans.
Writing in the Guardian recently, critic John Harris suggested that this risks pandering to American cultural prejudices. "There will surely be all kinds of cries about old European surrender monkeys [and] the US's contrasting backbone," he said.
United 93 is based on transcripts from the phone calls made by the passengers on board the plane, but much of the drama was improvised on set. "Surely one of the passengers didn't phone home to point out that there was a cowardly German on board who wanted to give in?" wondered the Sunday Times critic Cosmo Landesman. So far there is no evidence to suggest that Christian Adams did not support the other passengers, or refused to storm the cockpit.
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