Sully (2016) [Blu-ray]
Biography | Drama

Tagline: The untold story behind the miracle on the Hudson

On January 15, 2009, the world witnessed the "Miracle on the Hudson" when Captain Sully Sullenberger (Hanks) glided his disabled plane onto the frigid waters of the Hudson River, saving the lives of all 155 aboard. However, even as Sully was being heralded by the public and the media for his unprecedented feat of aviation skill, an investigation was unfolding that threatened to destroy his reputation and his career.

Storyline: On Thursday, January 15th, 2009, the world witnessed the "Miracle on the Hudson" when Captain Chesley Sullenberger, nicknamed "Sully" & is portrayed by Tom Hanks glided his disabled plane onto the frigid waters of the Hudson River, saving the lives of all 155 aboard. However, even as Sully was being heralded by the public and the media for his unprecedented feat of aviation skill, an investigation was unfolding that threatened to destroy his reputation and his career. Written by Warner Bros.

Reviewer's Note: Reviewed by Michael Reuben, December 21, 2016 On January 15, 2009, a US Airways flight collided with a flock of Canadian geese shortly after takeoff from New York's LaGuardia Airport. Both engines were destroyed, and the plane's veteran pilot, Capt. Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger, rapidly assessed that he lacked sufficient altitude and speed to reach any of the nearby airports. With no other option, Sullenberger glided the massive Airbus A320 onto the surface of the Hudson River, the first-ever successful water landing of a jet airliner. All 155 passengers and crew survived, with only minor injuries. Sullenberger was promptly hailed as a hero, and the press dubbed his accomplishment "the Miracle on the Hudson".

Sully is billed as the "untold" story of what happened after that miracle, as investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board (or "NTSB") second-guessed the actions of Sullenberger and his co-pilot, First Officer Jeff Skiles, and computer simulations indicated that the damaged plane could have returned safely to LaGuardia. While Sully was being lionized by the press and public, the regulatory investigations threatened to end his thirty-year career as a commercial pilot.

Clint Eastwood's account of these events uses the NTSB investigation as a narrative frame, but the film's real subject is the ambiguity of heroism. As the script by Todd Komarnicki (Perfect Stranger) repeatedly emphasizes, Sully's remarkable feat occurred at a moment when the country needed a hero as an antidote to war, recession and a future that looked increasingly dark and uncertain. But the man who finds himself abruptly thrust into this role keeps insisting that he's not a hero; he was simply doing his job. Like Chris Kyle in Eastwood's American Sniper, Sully must cope with private trauma while simultaneously bearing the burden of becoming a legend.

Sully opens shortly after January 15, 2009, on the first day of the NTSB's informal hearings and culminates in the agency's final hearing before an audience of professionals. (The script is deliberately vague about the time line, compacting events that extended over many months into a matter of days.) Throughout the proceedings, the lead NTSB investigators (Mike O'Malley, Jamey Sheridan and Breaking Bad 's Anna Gunn) repeatedly probe and question the decisions made in the cockpit of Flight 1549 in the 208 seconds between the bird strike and the water landing. While Sully (Tom Hanks) and Skiles (Aaron Eckhart) doggedly push back, in private Sully begins to question both his memory and his judgment. He suffers from insomnia, nightmares and waking fantasies of disaster and disgrace. His disqualification from flying while the investigation is pending threatens the Sullenberger family with economic ruin, a point on which Sully vainly attempts to reassure his wife, Lorrie (Laura Linney). In a device that emphasizes the beleaguered aviator's isolation, Eastwood never shows the couple together onscreen; all of their interactions occur over the telephone.

Sully's private suffering makes the public adulation all the more surreal. Reporters mob his home and follow his every move. He and his crew appear on TV with David Letterman, and Sully himself is interviewed by Katie Couric (playing herself). Complete strangers hug him, offer him drinks and convey proposals of marriage. But, like so many people unexpectedly thrust into the public spotlight, Sully remains uncomfortable with the attention. He just wants his old life back.

Eastwood intercuts the investigation with flashbacks to the events of January 15, 2009, which the director reenacts with exceptional realism—from the routine minutia of boarding and seating passengers, through the uneventful takeoff, to the suddenness of the collision and the tense professionalism of Sully and Skiles as they shift into crisis mode. The film also depicts the extraordinary rescue effort by a coalition of ferryboat crews, NYPD and other first responders, who spontaneously rallied to pull passengers and crew from the wreckage and the Hudson's freezing waters. But the rescue is seen only once, while the crash—or, as Sully insists on calling it, the "forced landing"—replays multiple times, like some post-traumatic nightmare from which the film cannot awake until the very end, when Sully is finally exonerated. Underscoring the event's nightmarish character, Eastwood includes strategic shots of panicked New Yorkers looking out their windows at yet another commercial airliner descending ominously toward the skyline. As one of Sully's colleagues aptly observes after the rescue: "It's been a while since New York had news this good. Especially with an airplane in it."

Hanks gives a supremely skillful performance, the kind that is routinely overlooked during award season in favor of florid histrionics. But he's playing a man who embodies plain-spoken modesty and calm self-possession, and Hanks conveys these qualities with the subtlety of which only an actor of exceptional talent and experience is capable. Even when Sully is wading through the plane's rapidly flooding passenger compartment, delaying his own evacuation while he checks for stragglers, Hanks underplays the moment. Only afterwards, alone or speaking with Lorrie, does he betray any hint of inner turmoil. His most overtly emotional moment occurs when Sully is informed, hours after the emergency landing, that all 155 occupants of the plane have been accounted for, and his face dissolves in a wave of relief.

Sully has some notable flaws. It exaggerates the antagonism of the NTSB investigators to the point of villainy, necessitating an abrupt and less-than-credible about-face when all the evidence is in. (Anna Gunn carries the burden of being the investigation's conscience, an unenviable task that she handles as well as anyone could.) The film also ends too abruptly, substituting photos of the real-life rescue and reunion video excerpts for a proper denouement. But despite these missteps, Sully remains a moving and memorable experience, because it effectively conveys how an ordinary day was suddenly transformed into a terrifying ordeal that, for some, continued long after the events making headlines.

Among other things, Sully is a reminder that expertise really does count, especially in a crisis. Sully's ability to successfully achieve a landing previously thought to be impossible depended on his intimate knowledge of the A320, his Air Force training, his work as a crash investigator and forty years of piloting craft of numerous sorts. Faced with a scenario for which there was no precedent or established procedure, he relied on everything he knew to improvise a solution that averted what could easily have been one of the worst disasters in aviation history. Eastwood has captured both the uniqueness of Sully's accomplishment and the toll that it took on him personally. Warner's Blu-ray presentation is first-rate and highly recommended.

[CSW] -3.6- Sully turns out to be a solid, satisfying look at a quiet professional who did exactly what was required of him in a crisis. The computer-generated flight scenes and the ferry rescue in the Hudson are well-done. Tom Hanks and Aaron Eckhart are perfectly cast as captain and first officer, and the unknown supporting actors -- the air traffic controller, emergency room doctor, and others -- did nice work. The accident investigators are portrayed, really unfairly, as second-guessing Sully's lifesaving decision, but they were necessary as the bad guys in a movie that simply had no bad guys. There was rightly the self-questioning by Sully himself and the dreams that a near death trauma brings on. But Tom Hanks' observation about simulations vs. real life is worthwhile. The end credit shots with the real Sully surrounded by his passengers were a nice touch by director Eastwood. Although the movie is touching, I would be hesitant to want to watch it again. I call this a once-is-necessary and once-is-enough movie.
[V5.0-A5.0] MPEG-4 AVC - No D-Box


º º