Sully
Director: Clint Eastwood
Stars: Tom Hanks, Aaron Eckhart, Laura Linney
Duration: 96 mins
Class: 12
KRS Releasing Ltd
It was a news event that hit the headlines in early 2009 that many remember clearly. A worldwide audience watched dumbstruck as a plane with 155 people on board suffered severe technical problems on take-off when a flock of birds flew into its engines, shutting them both down.
With the plane at a low altitude and nowhere to land, veteran pilot Captain Chesley ‘Sully’ Sullenberger took the split-second decision to land the plane on the Hudson River, an impossible and unthinkable feat that he accomplished with remarkable skill, saving the lives of all on board.
Yet, for all the accolades that deservedly washed over him, the National Transportation Safety Board investigation that followed called Sullenberger’s actions into question and threatened to destroy his until then – ahem – unsullied, decades-long career in the aviation industry.
It will undoubtedly provoke some moments of anxiety in those nervous about flying
Sully the movie looks at the questions raised after the incident, raising doubts within pilot himself as to whether the very drastic action he took was indeed the correct one, or whether he in fact endangered the lives of all those on board.
Like its quiet and unassuming protagonist, Sully is a quiet and unassuming film; almost to a fault. With Clint Eastwood and the helm, and Tom Hanks in the lead role, there is little doubt that this is a well-acted, solid documentation of the incident and its aftermath (the script is by Todd Komarnicki based on the book Highest Duty by Sullenberger and author Jeffrey Zaslow); yet for a story that had such a terrifying accident at its centre, it plays out with a remarkable lack of tension; almost documentary-like in its approach to its subject.
Its focus is on the minutiae of the investigation; and the myriad scenes detailing the reports of the various simulations carried out to recreate the incident and meetings upon meetings with NTSB officials and do not make for riveting viewing. Moreover, in a post-9/11 world – with New York desperately needing some good news (as one character points out), there was no way the heroic Sully was going to be reviled… and given that the outcome of the story is pretty well-known any dramatic tension is sucked out of the proceedings
On the plus side is the recreation of the incident itself, which is efficiently and chillingly rendered. It will undoubtedly provoke some moments of anxiety in those nervous about flying – like myself – while the chaotic scenes of the evacuation of the passengers from the sinking plane are remarkably effective.
And, finally, we can always count on the Hanks. The real Sully is in very, very good hands with the actor, who simply excels in this kind of role. He is the everyman who becomes a hero by doing something quite extraordinary, and the actor movingly channels the pilot’s significant grace under the most extreme example of pressure as he performs such a dangerous manoeuvre; his measured defence of his extraordinary actions.
“No one warned us. No one said you are going to lose both engines at a lower altitude than any jet in history,” he says tersely during the investigation at one point.
The film hints at Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder via Sully’s fevered dreams about what did and could have happened, the vivid hallucinations when awake and his incapacity to deal with all the press attention he getting – an aspect of the story I wish the film expanded upon even further.