I haven't run across anyone who walks away from the United 93 trailer unrattled. In case you haven't heard, this is the first big-screen "9/11 movie," an account of what happened aboard the best-documented hijacked flight, United Flight 93, bound for San Francisco. (I effortlessly missed the TV movie of the same name, whereas I'm agonizing over this.

I suppose I just expect tastelessness from movies-of-the week, and set my filters accordingly.) The ordeal of the Flight 93 passengers -- who allegedly banded together to overwhelm the hijackers, a heroic act that cost them their lives when the plane went down in rural Pennsylvania -- was the most natural story to tell (if natural's the word). Paul Greengrass (Bloody Sunday, The Bourne Supremacy) will be the one telling it. And from the look of the trailer, he may have done a good job. Maybe too good.

I don't think I believe in right and wrong, when it comes to which stories one ought to tell. Certainly, some stories are more openly pernicious than others; some are downright inappropriate. Some are difficult, but necessary. Apart from the political considerations behind the making of a 9/11 movie, what sort of emotional calculus should the moviegoer perform before choosing to see such a thing?