User reviews

I rented the DVD in a video store, as an alternative to reading the report. But it's pretty much just more terror-tainment.

While the film may present some info from the report in the drama, you're taking the word of the producers - there's no reference to the commission report anywhere in the film. Not one.

The acting, all around, is pretty bad - pretty much all of the stereotypes of 'hot shot' bitchy foul mouthed government agents, each thinking they know more than everyone else. There may be some truth to it, but it really has a bad Hollywood stereotype smell to it.

IMDb's user community ratings & comments tend to be more right than wrong, and I have started to glance at the ratings before renting whenever I can.

I wish I had on this one.

Am I the only one who thought the point of this film was the graphic violence? I knew nothing about Leigh Scott when I rented it, and would not have done so if I had known that most of his previous films were horror films. I am not into that at all, I was just expecting an informative docudrama of the 9/11 report.

Instead, I got an almost incomprehensible, violent movie. The only good thing about it for me, was that it made me want to read the report, to figure out what the heck this movie was about.

I wrote this because I am shocked that we have become so immune to violence in films and on TV, that it was not even worth commenting on by the bloggers whose reviews that I read.

I tried. Lord help me, how I tried. But there are just some people almost incapable of creating quality. Brett Ratner, Uwe Boll, Britney Spears, and Asylum. To their credit "The 9/11 Commission Report" seems like an honest attempt by the company to advance into a more sophisticated state of storytelling and movie making. But for all intents and purposes, it comes off as another truly film in their gallery. At the opening, the disclaimer notifies audiences that all the names have been changed, but the names of the terrorists remain relatively the same. A man named Mussaui attempts to learn how to fly a plane. With a stone cold grimace that would instantly make anyone uneasy, this "undercover" agent is able to learn how to fly on a small computer. And you have to wonder, not how he was able to get into this program so easily, but on how these people didn't even ask questions; because this scene is so far-fetched in its presentation, and the actor playing this man is extremely over the top. And you can see that director Scott attempts to mimic Paul Greengrass with a bright grainy photography that's followed by an awfully dizzying and irritating hand-held direction that, throughout the entire film, attempts to take off from Greengrass's gung-ho guerrilla film-making techniques.

You can sense Scott emulating Greengrass's technique for realism, but it becomes rather lame-brained halfway in. Meanwhile the film comes off less a "Traffic" take off, and more a take off on "Law & Order" in which we'll have the disclaimer notifying us the names have been changed, the logo almost reminiscent of the "Law & Order" logo, and then ninety minutes of the actors pumping their chests and discussing politics.

Neither of which are ever as compelling as it tries to be. And then when the film seems as if its attempting to be an adult drama, Scott relies on his old failsafe, the sex scene. Scott's new film looks like it really wants to be thought of as a low budget "Munich" but it's not, and it manages to be underwhelming on every such occasion possible. "The 9/11 Commission Report" falls flat, and that's because its limited in its attempts to imitate other films.

While I appreciate the ambition inherent behind the camera, this new perspective of the events leading up to 9/11 is flat, and dull. Hard as it may try to be a low-budget "Munich" it's only really as entertaining as a normal Dolph Lundgren film you'd find on Cinemax.

The 9/11 Commission Report (2006)

* (out of 4)

The Asylum, the studio best known for really bad and really cheap "mockbusters" decided to deliver something straight in this docudrama based on the commission report that was released on the September 11, 2001 attacks. Leigh Scott wrote and directed this picture and I think the majority of the blame has to go to the screenplay. I'm really not sure what type of story they were trying to get across but it's an incredible mess that never makes too much sense. Trying to get all of the pre-9/11 stuff into a low-budget, 84-minute movie was probably a bad idea to begin with but it certainly doesn't help that the execution is so poor. The story is pretty much impossible to follow but even worse is the really bad dialogue. As bad as the dialogue is, it doesn't help that the performances range from bland to bad. I mean, the story is bad, the dialogue is bad and the performances are bad so with all of this considered it's really easy to see why the film tanked. Whenever you're trying to deliver a political thriller, having all of those elements not work is just leading to a disaster. I can't say how many times we were supposed to be caught up in this tense political thriller yet the dialogue they were saying seemed to have been written by a ten-year-old and the performances saying it appeared to be from a high school play. There's just no way around the fact that this film really shouldn't have been made or at least not in the fashion that it was. The "Jason Bourne" style of filmmaking with the camera just sliding around everywhere also doesn't work here. I'm sure it was meant to draw us into the action but it fails. In the end, this film is just bad all around and if you're going to watch something bad from The Asylum then it's best to get something that's also campy.

I believe in giving any film a chance, regardless of whether it is old or new, considered good or bad or whatever it comes from. Yes even if it is part of a resume as notorious as The Asylum. The good news is The 9/11 Commission Report is not their worst, or one of them. The bad news is it is still an irredeemable piece of rubbish. Technically the film is appalling, the special effects have been worse but they are still third rate at best, the sound is muddied and drowns out the dialogue far too much and the scenery is dully lit. But it was the camera work that was the worst part, the hand-held shaky style is annoyingly over-used and headache-inducing. The music is very generic, and the acting lacks any personality or purpose, Rhett Giles is bland and Jeff Denton who saved The Hitchhiker can't do anything with his role. The way The 9/11 Commission Report is written gives no better news. The characters are underdeveloped and have no likability whatsoever, while the story is dully paced, has no life and is often incomprehensible. To make it even worse the dialogue is muffled too much, is corny and has nothing to make it engaging or informative. All in all, one of those films where you are struggling to think of anything that redeems it. 1/10 Bethany Cox

This documentary was very amateurish. It could have been made by college students. Assuming that it was, my grading is as follows. Content : C, Sound Quality : F ,Cinematography : F ,Acting : D, Soundtrack : F, Casting : C, Boobshot : A ......Overall Grade :D

I found myself getting seasick as we walked down the streets with the characters,bobbing up and down with each move of the cameraman'step.My mother-in-law even changed the batteries in her miracle ear and she could not hear the muffled dialog. Extensive post production editing and CGI would not help this bomb. These students would "barely" pass my course.My advise...don't waste your time or money for the one "A".

I couldn't even finish this, it was by far one of the worst movies I've ever tried to watch. It felt like an insult to 9/11 victims and their families, just godawful acting and no redeeming qualities.

I got about five minutes into it and turned it off and threw the disc in the garbage. I mean seriously; my 8 year old could have done a better job directing this 'movie'. The acting was horrible, the cameras were pathetic and the background music was overbearing and louder than the 'actors' lines. Stay away from this one. You'd be better off watching some lame conspiracy videos on YouTube. Sorry IMDb, but this garbage film isn't worthy of '10 lines of text' so I am going to finish this ten lines of text nonsense by talking about peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. First you take a jar of peanut butter and you spread it on a slice of bread. Then you take some jelly and spread it on another slice of bread. You put the two slices of bread together and enjoy something that is 100 times better than this crap movie. There, how's that for a 'ten lines of text' review?

The 9/11 commision report, well it feels like the title has been misplaced from another movie, and ive read the open tarts of the report, and when you see 9/11, you may think the tt crashing down and pentagon getting stricken by something, but this part of the story were just loosly connected to the history, and names should not have been changed ,just to justify the truth of the report..

its bad filmed, the sound product is a mess, with so much background noise ,even in well enclosed office rooms,so you may start thinking. the plot is very incoherent and bad worked out, and all of the story is merely how the intelligence agenciec and justice organs of the west, handled the data given to them on the upcoming events on the mentioned date.

this is not a good film, bad acting all over the line, and ends into infinity of nothing, why this is made is a mystery to me nd even in 2006 this was common knowledge for the ones who are merely a bit history freaked.

not a good watch think the grumpy old man

Despite what the other commentors have said, I felt that this was a very well done independent film. It was also quite informative and found a dramatic way to capture the ultimately dull and boring 9/11 Commission Report. I wasn't bothered by the camera work at all, and thought it was an interesting choice to be a "fly on the wall" rather than use more subjective framing and lighting. I also had no problems with the audio in my 5.1 surround system, although I did notice a couple of places where things seemed a tad out of sync. The acting in this film was exceptional, especially the character of "Mike" played by Rhett Giles. It was a very magnetic and moving performance. I also liked the actors in the Minnesota sequences, as they all felt very real and natural in their dialogue. Perhaps some viewers are bothered by what is clearly a more neutral or almost conservative viewpoint on world events. I found it to be a breath of fresh air, as everything coming out of Hollywood, studio or independent, seems to be obsessed with liberalism and liberal ideology.

As a side note, I watched another film by the same company with a lot of the same actors. It was really strange to see actors in such a serious work, then in a complete piece of fluff!

When you see the cover of this DVD it would appear to be a big time picture, but looks can be deceiving. Here are some gripes I had about this film:

1) The video quality appears to be something from an entry level consumer video camera.

2) Shots taken on the streets have massive camera bobbing and make you feel sick and unable to focus.

3)The audio almost never syncs with the video. In fact sometimes it's a full second off.

4) The volume must often be turned way up to hear certain scenes.

5) The actors dialog always seems muffled.

6) There are no subtitles to understand extremely muffled scenes which makes it hard to follow the plot.

7) Even shots taken from a stationary point have an unsteady camera view. They never bothered buying a tripod I suppose.

As for the quality of the story... I really can't give that an honest opinion because I simply couldn't catch it all due to the above technical flaws. I really wish it had subtitles it would be possible to follow.

All-in-all: Rent something else. This is too difficult to watch. The parts you can actually hear seem interesting, but you just can't follow most of it without subtitles --which aren't present.

I found this movie a welcomed escape from the fantasy of Hollywood. Leigh Scott has taken our hand and wiping away the mystery of the events leading up to that awful day.

Basically, as soon as I noticed the 2nd London bus with an 55 registration plate + a 53 plate black cab then that was it for me; at 6:35 ish in. If you can't get basic continuity right, then give up.