Review of Sully (2016) by Lane Z — 17 May 2017

Time and again, Clint Eastwood has wowed us on and off the screen with few duds. Since his departure from being in front of the camera a handful of years ago, Eastwood has given us great personal stories of every-day heroes. Sully, starring the illustrious Tom Hanks, focuses the story yet again on another greater-than-life human being, Chesley Sullenberger, the man who safely landed his airbus with all 155 alive and accounted for in the Hudson.

With his dyed hair and nearly identical frame, Hanks puts in a practiced performance of the captain. I've only seen Sully (the person) on talk shows, and I vaguely remember the raucous surrounding the event back in 2009, but Hanks puts forth a performance that's almost as quiet and humble as the man he is portraying, which works. There's no need for an Oscar performance here, but if you're looking for the definition of actor in the dictionary, Hanks is as solid here as they come. Big props to Aaron Eckhart as his co-pilot giving us the necessary humor to offer some levity to the situation at just the right times.

Sully excels with its well-executed flashbacks jumping back and forth from the present court room to the actual event. They seamlessly flow in the film and don't weigh anything down. The scenes in the plane are expertly done and the CGI, though perhaps a tad jumpy in the frame rate, works as needed.

With films needing a villain, the closest we get to that is Mike O'malley's character, Charles Porter and the NTSB board, which I later read were made-up characters for the film but based on their real-life counterparts. Because this film made those people out to be more vindictive than they might have been, the names were changed to prevent anyone in the audience from actually feeling any hate toward a real person. While it deflates the balloon a little, Hollywood has become so fixed on making sure there is a negative to every positive, a hero always needs a villain.

Lastly, the most unnecessary part of the film has to be Sully's family problems. Someone said it best that it felt like they started to pull on a thread of what appeared to be problems at home and then just dropped it. At only 90 minutes, we could have eliminated the 5 or so minutes it probably took up of airtime to keep our focus on the event itself.

Eastwood works multiple angles from the incident on the Hudson and thankfully brings a real-life event to the silver screen. It has been done time and time again, but with Eastwood's deft touch and ability to get the audience to react emotionally, Sully is a must-watch to remember simple acts of heroism are around us in all forms of professions and people.