Review of Sully (2016) by Daniel P — 01 May 2017

Tom Hanks - Lead Actor. Clint Eastwood - Director. What else did I need to know going into Sully? Those two names set my expectations for this biopic: nothing I've ever seen with either of those names has let me down. I expected only the highest quality from Sully, and the movie met my expectations perfectly, which became it's greatest strength and its singular weakness.

Sully documents the true story (yes true, the friends I went with didn't know this until the end) of Captain Chesley Sullenberger, portrayed by Tom Hanks, and his involvement in the "Miracle on the Hudson" and its aftermath. Tom Hanks, as we all would expect, gives a stellar performance in the film. His portrayal of the famous captain is accurate and hits hard in many of the scenes, and he does a great job in sharing his emotional roller coaster with audiences. Hanks is accompanied by Aaron Eckhart, who portrays Sully's co-pilot, and I enjoyed his performance as much as (if not more) I enjoyed Hanks'. The pair conveys their real-life counterparts and their relationship with emotion and heart, and some of my favorite scenes were when the two were on the screen at the same time.

Everything else about Sully is as good as I expected: the film keeps good pacing, switching between the events of the plane crash and the quieter, post-crash scenes, which efficiently kept the movie entertaining and built the main characters at the same time; the story is interesting and gripping, despite the fact that the ending was obvious to anybody who remembered the real-life events on the Hudson; and the screenplay, script, and emotion were all present like I expected. However, notice how I keep using the word "expected." Like I said, the film is great, but it is also everything I expected. The acting is awesome, but didn't blow me away. The story is well-executed, but didn't surprise me. The directing is superb, but didn't show me anything I hadn't seen before. Everything in the movie seems very cookie-cutter and straightforward. Nothing groundbreaking, nothing brand new. And don't get me wrong, I'm not saying Sully is a bad film, because it's not. But it's good to the definition of the word, not exploring any new territory or taking any risks. Unfortunately, that's the one thing that held it back.

I'd definitely recommend Sully to anyone looking for a good movie, and especially to anyone who wants to see Tom Hanks in action again. I'd watch it again without a doubt, and I'm sure most people would. But as I said, don't expect to be blown away or have your life changed by the film. Rather, expect a well-handled biopic about one of the most extraordinary true events of our lifetimes.