Movie Review: Sully

Clint Eastwood’s forensic new film Sully replays – and replays and replays – pilot Chesley Sullenberger’s water landing in New York’s Hudson River during the bitter chill of January 2009.

Though the event was nicknamed ‘Miracle on the Hudson’, Eastwood and screenwriter Todd Komarnicki seek to remove the ‘miracle’ from the legend, suggesting it was consummate professionalism - from not just Sully (Tom Hanks), but also First Officer Jeff Skiles (Aaron Eckhart), their flight attendants, first responders and those in air traffic control - that saved the 155 souls on board.

Supernatural forces are apparently given too much credit for their survival, which is an astounding statement from Eastwood, who once held an entire conversation with an invisible man in a chair.

Sully, taking inspiration, perhaps, from the song “A Real Hero” (written in honour of Sullenberger before being re-appropriated in Drive), gives the acclaim to “a real human being” instead.

Of course, as honourable a mission as that may be, it means Sully’s celebration of ordinariness doesn’t quite carry the fizz and pop of Flight, the Denzel Washington vehicle that basically turned Sullenberger’s feat up to 11. His pilot, an alcoholic, landed a plane upside down in a field. So there.

Hanks’ performance as the reluctant idol is steady, sturdy and not ever showy. The closest he gets to ‘emotive’ is a brief welling-of-the-eyes at the hospital, after hearing that all of his passengers survived. It’s a reminder that Tom Hanks does his best work while being treated for trauma.

For those unfamiliar with the tale, Sully and Skiles’ US Airways Flight from New York to Charlotte was interrupted by a flock of geese, who struck – and rendered useless – both of their plane’s engines. Within minutes, the duo attempted what could have been a fatal landing, right in the heart of NYC.

The flick begins with Sully being questioned by officials (Anna Gunn, Mike O’Malley, Jamey Sheridan) over what precisely happened on board, and why he declined instructions to return to LaGuardia Airport for a safer landing. The suggestion is that Sullenberger risked hundreds – if not thousands – of lives by parking in such a densely populated area. Sully himself shares those concerns, if his nightmares – of a plane hurtling into New York skyscrapers – are any indication.

The 9/11-evoking visuals (especially for something literally being released on a 9/11 anniversary weekend) are unnecessarily triggering, but worst of all, untrusting of Hanks’ ability to convey stoic guilt and concern. Eastwood, not so much a great American director as an American director who has made some great films, is usually at his best when cool and restrained. These warped fantasy sequences are neither.

The crash sequence, however, is pure cinema at its finest. Its many replays might seem like overkill (or, rather, an attempt to get the most bang out of the CGI budget), yet each time we gain greater perspective over the collaborative and professional nature of the descent.

You could offer the same compliment – though much less was at stake – to the picture's crew. Blu Murray’s skilful editing (and the sound department’s gradually-unpeeled sonic layers) reveal the many individuals working to put the plane down in one piece. Eastwood, as a steward, sometimes leaves his players stranded (he rarely shoots multiple takes and is famously blasé about unpolished scripts). Not here. This is a movie of – and about – professional synchronicity.

Beyond the assured Hanks and a pleasingly-moustachioed Eckhart, the cast is composed of familiar, reliable faces. Laura Linney has a few scenes as Sully’s wife Lorraine, back at their home in California, and she performs them entirely while holding a phone. It’s the best mobile-adjacent work she’s ever done, I suppose.

Sully never quite makes a solid case for its 96 minutes of existence (Sullenberger’s grilling over the event is mostly anti-climactic) and ends only with a jovial shrug. Still, there’s good stuff on display here. Watching a job well done (by someone else) can be its own reward.

3.5/5

In cinemas now. Rated M for mature themes and coarse language.