SULLY (2016) MOVIE REVIEW - The Untold Story Behind The Miracle On The Hudson

When his plane suffers catastrophic damage over New York, Chesley ‘Sully’ Sullenberger (Tom Hanks) has to make a split-second choice about how to safely bring his craft down. His choice saves everyone on board, but his superiors question whether it was the right one.

  

SYNOPSIS:

On Jan. 15, 2009, Capt. Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger (Tom Hanks) tries to make an emergency landing in New York's Hudson River after US Airways Flight 1549 strikes a flock of birds. With no power, he had the choice to glide into one of two nearby airports, potentially crashing into Manhattan, or to land in the Hudson River, which risked killing everyone on board. He chose the latter. Astonishingly, everyone on board survived 155 persons. Sully was hailed a hero. The movie has it he was then investigated by the National Transportation Safety Board, who were determined he had acted recklessly.

It’s at this point that the film’s premise becomes confused. You have Hank’s Sullenberger, a man who has no desire to be famous, just wants to do his job and isn’t prepared for the role of hero. Hanks plays this journey beautifully, his words saying little but his face conveying the struggle of someone who believes he did the right thing, but wonders if, just maybe, he didn’t and isn’t worth this adoration. This, however, doesn’t present much tension — everyone survived, so how can any outcome make Sully the bad guy? — so Eastwood tries to amp up the drama with safety investigators manipulating facts to discredit him and the media making his life unbearable by trying to celebrate him. While the investigation actually happened, it doesn’t convince that he would immediately be treated with suspicion.

With nowhere obvious for the story to go, Eastwood keeps circling back to recreating the events of the crash, which are so well put together they may induce motion-sickness. In fact, these few minutes between engine failure and crash hold the entirety of Sullenberger’s story. He’s an ordinary man who was briefly extraordinary. That leaves much of the film grounded, but it still has a much better than ordinary performance from Hanks to lift it.

POSITIVE SIDE OF THE SULLY (2016)

Sully depicts this feat of gifted airmanship with all the vérité that Hollywood’s cinematographic wizardry can bring to bear. It also, generously and wisely, includes others who played vital roles, such as the unflappable flight attendants and the ferry boat crews that plucked passengers from the deadly cold.

Sully doesn't see himself as a hero, even before the questions start flying. "I'm just a man doing his job," he says.

Sully is really a study in good old-fashioned competence, a salute to people who do their jobs and do them well under stressful, near-impossible conditions. It'd be easy to panic in a situation like this. But Sully and his crew never did. And a lot of lives were saved because of it

NEGATIVE SIDE OF THE SULLY (2016)

None.

FULL CAST AND CREW:
Directed by                 : Clint Eastwood
Producer                      : Frank Marshall
Screenwriter                : Todd Komarnicki
Composer                    : Original Music : Christian Jacob
Cinematographer        : Tom Stern
Production Designer   : James J. Murakami

Release date                : September 9, 2016

Runtime                      : 95 minutes

Language                    : English

Cast :

1.          Tom Hanks as Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger

2.          Blake Jones as Sully (16 years old)

3.          Aaron Eckhart as Jeff Skiles

4.          Laura Linney as Lorraine Sullenberger

5.          Anna Gunn as Dr. Elizabeth Davis

6.          Autumn Reeser as Tess Sosa

7.          Ann Cusack as Donna Dent

8.          Holt McCallany as Mike Cleary

9.          Mike O'Malley as Charles Porter

10.       Jamey Sheridan as Ben Edwards

11.       Jerry Ferrara as Michael Delaney

12.       Molly Hagan as Doreen Welsh

13.       Max Adler as Jimmy Stefanik

14.       Sam Huntington as Jeff Kolodjay

15.       Wayne Bastrup as Brian Kelly

16.       Valerie Mahaffey as Diane Higgins

17.       Jeff Kober as L. T. Cook

18.       Molly Bernard as Alison

19.       Chris Bauer as Larry Rooney