A project like “United 93,� about the one hijacked 9/11 plane that did not hit its target, seems fraught with peril. There’s the “is it too soon?� angle, which has been discussed at length in the media – the trailer was pulled from a New York theater when patrons complained. There’s also the question of whether audiences can respond to the quality of the filmmaking when the heroism of the passengers who assaulted the cockpit is staring them in the face.

And, of course, there’s the question of whether any filmmaker can do justice to such a raw, key piece of recent history. Oliver Stone is also working on a 9/11 film, tentatively entitled “World Trade Center,� and knowing Stone’s love of the subtle, the film might actually be more traumatic for viewers than watching the horrific events unspool on TV was five years ago.

A&E aired “Flight 93� a few months ago, and flew under the radar (so to speak) so that it avoided the hand-wringing accompanying “United 93.� (It did well for the network.) But “United 93� is a big Hollywood movie with a sizable marketing budget, so it makes for an easier target.

Watching it with an audience is an eerie experience. For the first part of the film, you sense the intense concentration from those around you – it’s almost as if, as a group, you’re desperately trying to will events to unfold differently than the way we inevitably know they did. The comfortably prosaic manner in which the movie opens – pilots conducting their flight check, flight attendants exchanging idle chatter – serves to make what we all know must happen shocking nonetheless.

Writer-director Paul Greengrass, almost miraculously, never missteps in bringing this awful saga to the screen. His film has the feel of a documentary (some of those who monitored the tragedy from the F.A.A., airline towers and military bases play themselves in the film; it’s impossible to separate them out from the actors). There’s not a moment of hyperbole, not a whit of speechifying, not one moment that feels “Hollywood.� (OK, so now we know it can be done in the studio system; why can’t someone else manage it?) (No, this point cannot be stressed too much – even a modicum of manipulative storytelling would’ve cheapened this project immeasurably.) The closest he comes to stylistic contrivance is when he cross-cuts between the passengers and the terrorists praying in the final minutes of the flight.

In short, it’s exemplary filmmaking, if wrenchingly exhausting to sit through – when the film went to black at the end, I’d swear my heart skipped a beat for long, agonizing seconds until a title card appeared. Greengrass, a British filmmaker, doesn’t try to embellish his story. He’s smart enough – no, brilliant, really – to know he doesn’t need to.

All that said, I could’ve picked a better movie to see the night before I fly to New Orleans.