Review of Sully (2016) by Spangle — 22 Feb 2017

Whenever I watch a standard biopic, a thought crosses my mind: Do directors and writers ever feel bad about turning somebody's life into something unextraordinary? In a film such as this, a real life tale of heroism, Clint Eastwood just shoves Sully's life into being a rehash of every inspirational biopic ever made. In the process, the extraordinary becomes typical and loses its power. He tries to change the formula a bit and turns the film into an occasionally flashback look at the Miracle on the Hudson and the impact it had on Chesley Sullenberger (Tom Hanks) and all those on-board, but the film just never really sticks the landing. Its real power is found on the plane, but Eastwood seems reluctant to go to the plane at all and instead tells uninteresting side stories.

One of the main culprits in the crash of Sully is the inclusion of the NTSB investigation. Cliched, annoying, and unfair to the NTSB who did not interrogate Sully or make him out to be a villain, these portions of the film are included to add stakes and tension to non-flight scenes. However, they just feel like inclusions from every cliched feel good biopic of the past century. The scenes do not add tension, rather they merely annoy and distract from the true story: the landing of the plane on the Hudson. They do not add greater understanding to the story and merely exist to add the false tension that the film could find on the plane, but refuses to do so for a long stretch. Worse yet, the NTSB investigation is greatly predictable. As it is not true, it is clear it will always come back positive for Sully after he is persecuted for much of the film. Eastwood tries to strike an anti-bureaucracy tone here as they try to tear down this great American hero. Unfortunately, he misses the mark. Throughout the film, we see nothing but evidence he could have made it back and an over-eager Sully taking a nosedive into the Hudson. The way the film paints it, it seems like he wanted to land in the Hudson regardless of the options available to him. By the end, he is cleared and we all celebrate that he has been vindicated, but this does not excuse the scattershot approach to the treatment of Sully's decision or the actions of the NTSB.

The film also tacks on Sully's wife Lorraine (Laura Linney). Watching a talented actress get stuck in a somebody's wife role is always tough, just as it is watching Linney struggle for air in a film that strips her of any role in the film. Randomly popping up to further add pathos and power with Sully's family, the scenes are flat, dull, and useless. Linney tries her best, but the scenes feel scripted and nonsensical. Perhaps they are real, but they never feel authentic and are akin to the flight simulations run throughout the film. The scenes simply miss the mark and do not add emotional depth to the film, especially since it did not need any more stakes or suspense. The scenes are all shown in the aftermath of the accident, so we know Sully survived. Thus, Eastwood is forced into showing delayed reaction on the part of Lorraine or her first seeing it on the news, but even then it lacks the suspense of her not knowing about Sully's safety, since he was the one who told her to see the television. In other words, the scenes are useless.

The only scenes that work are the ones in the plane. Unfortunately, Eastwood even strips these of tension by showing them out of order. The film could have been 24 minutes and 208 seconds long without missing any of the good parts. The only successful parts of this film come as a result of the natural pathos, tension, and thrills aboard this plane that is coming down on the Hudson. Fluff added via the control tower and the guy who thinks the plane crashed, the rescue teams, and otherwise, are unnecessary additions of hero worship or suspense. The plane hitting the birds, them landing the plane, the flight crew preparing the passengers, the passengers telling one another they love each other, the landing, and then the rescue. That is it. That should be the whole film. End credits. Fin. In these scenes, Tom Hanks is in full control and Aaron Eckhart is equally terrific. Eastwood's direction is reserved, relying upon the scene to provide the tension with no artificial additions to try and make it even more suspenseful. The scenes just play out to perfection, but are sadly chopped up and strewn throughout the film. It seems as if Eastwood knew they were the only scenes that worked, so he tried to make it last longer as he built a film from scraps around these top-notch sequences. Unfortunately, the film suffers under this bloat and the excess scenes feel so much worse in comparison to the scenes that do work. In essence, Sully is a film with a great core - the acting and the flight sequences - but it refuses to use them, in favor of peripheral element that suck the life out of the entire picture.

A mixed bag, Sully would be a great short film. As a feature length film, it is not.