Paul Greengrass, cheerfully defining "the DNA of our times" for your viewing pleasure

Look, I admit I reacted a little nervously when I heard Oliver Stone had a 9/11 film in the works, especially something with Nicolas Cage that sounded kind of like a TV-movie capitulation to the mainstream interests Stone has spent so many years defying.

But then I read that filmmaker Paul Greengrass (Bloody Sunday, The Bourne Supremacy) now has the green light to move ahead with Flight 93, a real-time narrative about the eponymous flight's hijacking and subsequent crash in rural Pennsylvania. Before you get too carried away considering the film's potential (and the inevitable "Let's roll" tagline), let us try and remember who is behind the camera:

After noting that media, politicians, historians and religious leaders will try to find a context for the 9/11 tragedy as its fifth anniversary approaches next year, Greengrass makes the case for his film to do the same.

"I ... believe that sometimes, if you look clearly and unflinchingly at a single event, you can find in its shape something precious, something much larger than the event itself ... the DNA of our times. Hence, a film about Flight 93," he writes in the treatment.

Dude. Paul. Heavy. Are you sure you and Ollie Stone do not have your projects mixed up? Or at least your drugs?