102 Minutes That Changed America (2008 TV Movie) User Reviews

A must watch..

[thezenunderground · 9/10 · 18 June 2019]

I was in my junior yearof highschool when this event took place. Approaching twenty years later, I decided to watch "102 minutes.." This documentary is historically important. It reflects the events of that day, unbiased. The event itself shaped so much of the next decade, and the decade after, I fekt like this film is a rare capture of a world changing event, as it unfolds, without interpretation. I walked away moved and shaken.

It was incredibly moving to watch reports, first hand, in highschool..and then to revisit in my 30's. I highly recommend.

9/10

[Analog_Devotee · 9/10 · 20 June 2021]

Probably the best of all the 9/11 documentaries. Concise while also being descriptive. Incredibly engrossing and a great formula which envelopes the unfolding real-time events perfectly.

Never forget.

Watching this on the eve of the 20th anniversary and this is still the most terrifying event in U.S. history, and this documentary shows the eeriness and devastation up close.

[tresm87 · 9/10 · 11 September 2021]

For how grim and terrible the subject matter is, this documentary is truly astounding in how many different angles, interviews, and pieces of raw footage it has. As sad and horrid it is to see everything in vibrant detail, it's integral to our history. Most of the footage is more disturbing than what any horror film could conjure up in any aspect. I'll say the foreboding music adds a lot to the the overall viewing experience and keeps you very intrigued to the whole doc. I would honestly say it's one of the best documentaries for real footage of a historical event.

Reliving 9/11 as distant observers

[Rufus-T · 10/10 · 16 July 2009]

There have been many documentary about 9/11 since the attack. This one took the idea of the TV show "24" and showed the events from seconds after the 1st plane hit up to about 100 min thereafter in real time. The footage used were mostly from personal camcorders, and some from TV. The audios were either directly from the camcorders, from the media coverage or phone conversations sound bites at the moment. What was interesting about the documentary is that the point of view is not at the Twin Towers, but away from the Twin Towers. You see people in Time Square watched it on the outdoor large screen. You see students watching the event from Stevens Institute across the river in Hoboken, NJ. You see how people reacted in their apartments far away from the Twin Tower. In a way, the documentary is not just about 9/11, but an anthropological view of the people's reaction upon crisis. The editing job of putting all these material together was superb.

Still unbelievable.

[Duckmaster · 10/10 · 1 April 2009]

102 minutes that changed America is a totally engrossing documentary, focusing on the attacks in New york in real time. Much of the footage has never been seen before. It captures perfectly the terror, chaos and confusion of that morning, using police and fire department radio calls, 911 calls from people trapped in the towers and of course video footage from news cameras and people in the street. The most amazing moment is filmed from an apartment several blocks away. As two women talk off camera, the second plane flies into the second tower. The screams of horror and disbelief that follow are just incredible to hear. Unmissable.

Absolutely mesmerising

[davoshannon · 10/10 · 25 March 2009]

I watched this two nights ago on the History Channel and was completely engrossed.

I watched the entire thing unravel on Sky News as it happened, and as I was concentrating on the pictures as opposed to the fill-in commentary the "102 minutes" tended to match my remembrance of the time. For example, I will never forget Kay Burley waffling about something, with a picture wall backdrop behind her of the two towers in the distance from well north. I watched a belching cloud of dust create in the distance and knew one of them had come down. Unbelievable as that was at the time.

"102 minutes" recreates the experience from everyone's eyes in the vicinity. Expertly edited, with some very poignant radio messages and phone calls done as voice-over (particularly those of the NYFD).

I didn't cross the spoilers box, as everyone knows the story. But watch for a video left running unattended (family's voices in the background), out a window, industrial hoppers in the foreground, and Tower 1 in the distance. As the inevitable happens in perfect focus, I think my heart stopped for a beat or two. Unforgettable.

Last night I watched World Trade Centre with Nicholas Cage. One review in the paper was rather scathing, and said "the film" about 9/11 was probably still out there waiting to be made. He was right; "102 minutes" is it!.

This is an absolute must see.

electric

[markgorman · 10/10 · 8 September 2009]

Channel 4 has absolutely surpassed itself in screening this moving and extremely challenging documentary. For two hours, image after image took one's breath away as we saw real (but mostly very high quality) video footage of the twin towers collapse from 8.45 am until 10 29 am. Played sequentially with views from all angles including actually inside the towers it was heart stopping television.

I think one thing that made it so powerful was its lack of commentary and opinion. It was not a political film, simply an unfolding of an event in something like real time. Some might say it was the extremest form of voyeuristic television but I thought it was a work of true skill and, indeed, art. I should make special mention of the constant but very subtle musical underscore, by Brendon Anderegg, which was quite beautiful. Someone call the BAFTAs. (And the Academy, and the Emmys.) Truly magnificent TV.

This is absolutely the best historical coverage of 9/11 I've seen

[degrimstead-1 · 10/10 · 11 September 2011]

There are plenty of news specials on this week, since today's the 10th anniversary of the event, but after taking a look at a lot of them I have to say that this 2008 documentary (made by The History Channel, I believe - ?) is the very best there is. It has no commercials, is in chronological order of what occurred and there is NO NARRATION, which allows you to re-live the entire thing as if it's happening again. Not that this is something anyone actually wants to do ... but, if you're looking for the best collection of videos explaining exactly what happened that day, this is the one for you. I may even look into purchasing a copy, for a historical reference.

One of the most striking documentaries seen

[koriandr_star · 11 September 2011]

I remember 9/11, in the UK I just finished college and was getting the bus when some people were saying they got text messages from other friends telling them someone attacked the twin towers. When i got home I found my younger brother glued to the TV telling me one of the towers were burning away, I saw it and I was in disbelief.

In the same way this is how the documentary starts with a surprise on seeing the tower on fire, nobody knowing of yet how it hit at the time. That was at 8:46am people just got up to leave home, and on the other side of the Atlantic I was on my way back home.

The style of the program is cameras from camermen on the ground as well as civilian footage, the reactions of anger, fear and more all seen and absorbed to this footage.

Then you see the fires, the jumpers, the second crash, the fall of the tower, the dust, the second collapse and a final dust sweeping over new york.

What was perhaps the greatest shock was seeing the full devastation the dust brought, covering all streets in dirty brown dust, water is dirty, windows smashed and an entire scenery which bears no resemblance to the New York we all know and love. To be there at time must had been terrifying, and no Hollywood film could replicate the fear the events brought as shown from eyes of ordinary people.

This film serves just as much an educational purpose as it does retelling the events.

Outstanding

[welshNick · 10/10 · 4 September 2010]

There are over 100,000 stories concerning the people of New York who were in Manhattan on that fateful day. This documentary shows the footage that some of them shot that day on video cameras. With superb editing it concentrator's less on the news footage of the towers falling but more on the reactions and emotions of the people who were either living in Manhattan or working there. With all the footage available I daresay a dozen films could be made as good as this one but the film makers did make a good choice of footage to use. We see the reaction of people watching the news feed in Time Square, in the bars and on the TV. The sight of the ash cloud as the second tower went down looked like something after a nuclear war. As for my own insignificant story. I was in London working in my office on the 23rd floor watching it all happen on CNN. I looked out of the window on a brilliantly sunny day and could see all the way to the Alexandra Palace. I really felt vulnerable all of a sudden and after an emergency meeting with the Bank's Bosses we all went home.

A powerful piece of film, a must-watch for everyone.

Interesting perspective

[bbewnylorac · 6/10 · 12 September 2021]

This doco may seem at first quite easy to make, but would have probably been hard. How do you sum up the experiences of a huge number of people in New York at the time of the World Trade Center attacks, using footage from home cameras? This piece does not have interviews, nor extra information - just the time at various points and then footage of what was happening.

It's often far too meditative - lingering on shots or people that aren't that interesting - than it needed to be. The widely varied reactions are interesting - a woman far away from the towers panicks and keeps walking without stopping, whereas a man very close to the North tower before it fell is in no hurry, just stands there and says he was just making sure everyone got out of his own building. Neighbours in a small apartment building are so confused about what's going on, and the air quality outside, that they can't decide whether to stay or go. One young man watching the towers from the street seems to be almost smiling, but on closer inspection, he is upset and scowls at the camera to get out of his face. Nervous firefighters a long way from the towers fumble with their equipment before walking towards the North tower. It looks like the tower fell before they got there.

The true, most shocking image of 9/11 tragedy

[aminjacoub · 10/10 · 14 September 2010]

I've seen many documentaries about this horrible tragedy but non of them did have so much shocking atmosphere.

It is not typical documentary with narration or speaking hosts, it is true image of the tragedy very intelligently made from multiple camera shots and recorded voices of people that witness it from beginning of the attacks.

The background music is of pure horror that follows scenes from first shot till the moments when huge dust settled after both towers collapsed.

It is the image of the real situation, the pure horror of that tragedy, the real image of human fear and shock. If you ever saw catastrophic movie and you know the excitement feeling, this documentary will make you feel shocked, speechless and with tears in your eyes.

Great great work.

All the worst bits

[SteveCrook · 2/10 · 22 July 2012]

They said in the opening credits that this was made from previously unseen footage. There's good reason that it was previously unseen - most of it is of extremely poor quality, even the parts shot by professional crews. I presume that all the better quality parts were used in the many other documentaries. Lots of shots of not being able to see very much.

It was interspersed with extracts from radio & TV commentators uttering the usual inanities and not really not what was going on. Many reports of "panic on the streets" - following by shots of people trying to get away as quickly as possible, but no sign of any panic. Lots of news crews disregarding the advice to clear the roads or leave the area, getting in the way of people trying to help other people.

911 operators telling people in the twin towers to stay where they were, the firemen were on the way. But they couldn't be expected to have known that the towers would collapse. I doubt if even the attackers expected that.

Best documentary about September 11 I have ever seen.

[flavia_cj · 10/10 · 21 September 2016]

For me this is the best documentary about 9/11 until today. Other documentaries make analysis more cold and rational about the attacks, and has its great importance, of course, but this one is 100% immersive because it shows the point of view of those who felt the terror in the skin, without the need for any narrator in the background explaining the events. This is the strength of this documentary: the images and the reaction of the people speak for themselves. It gives the sensation of fear, confusion and perplexity that the people were feeling. Even if you're not a North American, even if you live in another country far this tragedy, when you watch this documentary, you have the full feeling that was there that day. A very impressive and impactful documentary.

Horrifying Yet Worthy

[LadyKanerasoka · 10/10 · 21 May 2012]

I saw this for the first time a year ago and until I saw this, I never knew how horrible 9/11 was for I was only 9 years old. Seeing this made my heart stop and start nonstop, my hair stand up on end, and adrenaline rushing through me. And although I had nothing related to 9/11, just seeing this made me feel that I do. I've watched other documentaries after I saw this and none of them were as educational as this one. I would definitely recommend this to someone who doesn't know how horrible that day was. And I have to give the crew members an A+ on the sound editing and on how they arranged all the recorded footage into the film to make an actual timeline.

Unreal, even after years have passed

[blanche-2 · 10/10 · 12 September 2010]

I was living in New York City, in Greenwich Village in fact, when 9/11 happened. From our neighborhood, we could see the smoke, and that horrible smell was all over the city. On the window of Ray's Pizza, people had put their "Missing" sheets. It would be a while before a lot of people knew what happened to their loved ones. Chaos reigned.

This documentary takes video footage that various people shot and combines it. While the cameras were rolling, sometimes in people's apartments, in Times Square, out on the street near Ground Zero, you can hear comments. When the second plane hit, a young woman screams to her friend who's filming, "It's terrorists." Panic ensues. No one is safe. No one realizes the ramifications of even being in the area. They soon do, as the buildings collapse and a huge cloud chases the running crowds.

America was completely unprepared for this tragedy. The shock, the horror, the initial reactions, the rumors that started, the anger, as well as what was happenings to the buildings, it's all documented here. Truly a no-miss.

The Premiere 9/11 Documentary

[ndroberts-53327 · 10/10 · 25 August 2019]

Throughout cinema, there's certain films or TV shows that are presented in such a way that they completely and totally immerse you. Shows such as Chernobyl, or movies like Downfall come to mind. 102 Minutes That Changed America takes this and cranks it up to 11. There is not a moment in this documentary that takes you out of New York City on that morning. I would be hesitant to call this a documentary, in fact, this show is more along the lines of an archive or a time capsule. It is completely raw, organic, and brutal in it's approach to documenting the event. From watching and listening to the horror in the voices of a few college girls filming it, to the eerie silence of the almost "nuclear winter" of the streets surrounding the towers after they fell.

This real-time "time capsule" is emotionally draining to watch, but it is one of the best, if not, the best documentary to ever be produced, and it will remain a timeless piece of documentation.

Superb!

[cassone-1 · 10/10 · 11 September 2010]

I am literally in awe of this film. The dynamics are so extreme, the images not only heartbreaking and historic, but the definition of a tragic day that defines a generation. While difficult to take it all in, you can not take away from the heroes, the struggle people went through and the sheer collective overwhelming sense of panic and loss. It is as though you are there, but witnessing it from afar. I can see why this won all four of it's Emmy Awards, especially for the editing and sound editing and mixing - all of which are nothing less than top notch. One of the best made films of the year. This film captures the humanity as well as the force and power of science. When it tells you to move, you move. The pace of this is a phenomenal display of the events it shows. Bravo!

Mesmerizing

[spolonski · 10/10 · 14 September 2019]

One of the most mesmerizing documentaries of all time. Accurately captures the mood and reactions of people on the street as well as the tremendous courage of the public servants during this horrific event. The absence of a narrator and the synchronization of actual time with the video clips makes it so you are actually reliving the event. A superb historical record.

fantastic

[chaitankrish · 10/10 · 2 February 2020]

The documentary is absolutely great and the videos showed in the documentary is mindblowing where while watching this documentary makes you feel like as if you are there during 9/11 event

Waste of time

[yogijb · 3/10 · 4 July 2018]

102 minutes of my life that I'd like back.

When this aired on a french-language tv station (translated as "102 Minutes That Changed The World"), I quickly looked up an original version to stream and came across the 15th anniversary edition of this documentary.

The footage is simply not interesting. We still see the burning twin towers and people running all over the place, but not even footage of the actual planes that hit the towers. Also, they sometimes cut to a clock, trying to put the footage in a chronologic order, but the clock gets shown with even 1/100 of seconds, as if they ever could line up the footage that precise (most of it overlaps, so, more than anything, it chops up the full length in chapters).

Even more so: for the 15th anniversary edition, it cuts out to do some interviews with people that were indirectly impacted (either lived nearby or that have lost a family member) while they are looking back with the interviewer. Hardly interesting and cuts what little energy the documentary had to begin with.

It's footage from 9/11, so it's hard to remain unaffected looking at this for nearly 2 hours. But... If you're looking for more impressive footage: find a different documentary. If you're looking for something more educative: find a different documentary. If you're looking for something concise: find a different documentary.

This is the least interesting 9/11 documentary out there.

Gripping

[walshj-01468 · 10/10 · 21 October 2021]

Real life cameras , real life documentary. Absolutely shocking but superb film making. Feels like you are there running from the falling towers , not seen a better real life documentary.

9/11 Put in Perspective

[Cineanalyst · 9/10 · 11 September 2021]

Although a clunky title to be sure, especially as I watched the 15th Anniversary Edition, which includes added interviews and other additional footage so that the program is no longer even 102 minutes in length (the time it took for the towers to collapse after first being hit), nor entirely an observational real-time account, as it was in its original TV presentation in 2008, "102 Minutes That Changed America" is nonetheless a unique perspective on the terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. The real-time account, with shots of the time changing are reminiscent of the "24" TV show, which is unfortunate because this documentary is much better than that. Being a collection of amateur video taken from various perspectives and people of that day and maintaining an observational documentary approach grounds it with humanity, making it all the more devastating than an expositional and more-distanced perspective would. It's also fundamentally cinematic, stripped to the art form's basic components of the space of the camera's view and the time of montage. Beside James Hanlon and the Naudet brothers' "9/11" (2002), this History Channel production from Nicole Rittenmeyer and Seth Skundrick's is the best documentary I know of covering the tragedy.

Perhaps, upon another anniversary of that day, I'll try to see the 2008 version of this, as I do appreciate the observational style. Sure, the non-amateur interviews and footage not in the real-time form of the rest of the proceedings do add a great deal. We meet up with college friends who raced away from their vantage point in their upper-storied apartment upon the second plane hitting the South Tower, realizing then the intentionality of the terrorism going on. Another interview relates how a family discovered from this program where a fireman was and what he was doing in trying to save lives before losing his own to the collapse of the South Tower. A final interview is between a father and his daughter, who he recorded when she was four years old reacting after the collapse of the towers. "It's not there anymore."

These interviews, however, do as well subtract us from being in the moment, whether in apartments a few blocks away as TVs are heard in the background reporting on what can be seen outside the windows, from across the harbor in New Jersey, looking at screens in Times Square, dismayed from a TV helicopter, listening to amateur interviews and recorded conversations or emergency communications, wandering stunned amid the papers and fallen materials littering the streets after the planes struck, or ultimately running for their lives from the enveloping clouds of smoke and debris, to finally at the site of a ferry as survivors escape from Lower Manhattan. No adjectives can quite capture such horrors.

Aside from the censoring of foul language in the version I saw (I mean, really, it's ridiculous that's what they're concerned about showing) and some questionable musical scoring at times, there's nothing to fault in the production here. It's a finely composed collection of invaluable primary-source footage. As for the title, again, it's also a significant understatement. Indeed, America was changed--and so was the world. I remember an article from "The Economist" that I read sometime later about "the end of the end of history," which refers to a silly Marxist notion that was promulgated in an essay and subsequent book by Francis Fukuyama, but the basic takeaway is that 9/11 was the most significant geopolitical thing to happen since the fall of the Soviet Union. It changed the world. It changed history.

Yet, wisely, the only such wider perspective or exposition provided here are of the people talking to each other about what was going on, or what one may overhear from TV reporters or the addresses by President Bush. The overriding focus is on the sheer, visceral trauma of it and the sympathy--and empathy via these on-the-scene video accounts--for those in danger and who died. The people falling from the towers being especially shocking. And people are continuing to die prematurely from the toxic air breathed in and from their injuries incurred from that day, for which the death toll seems will eventually exceed 3,000 people, as the official tally as of this writing is at 2,977, having climbed from 2,751 deaths initially resulting from the attacks.

The most realistic and dramatic documentary on 9/11

[kayabay-68081 · 9/10 · 27 January 2022]

I've watched almost all the documentaries made on 9/11.

But this one is far more realistic and dramatic than any other.

It is a mix up of all real footage & from the eyes of real people.

I hope such a disaster never happens again and all precautions taken be more effective.

This is humanity and civilization againt the evil.

RIP for all the innocent men & women who lost thier lives in such a tragic event and God help the people who witnessed the horrible day.

Very impactful

[briancham1994 · 9/10 · 11 August 2020]

This documentary series is comprised of personal footage of the 9/11 attacks as they happen in real-time. This gives us a very up-close and personal view of what happened. The effect is quite impactful and emotional.