Review of Sully (2016) by Andre M — 02 Jan 2017

Clint Eastwood transforms the events, in 2009, of Flight 1549-which Captain Chesley Sullenberger and First Officer Jeff Skiles safely landed in the Hudson River after losing both jets in a bird strike-into a fierce, stark, haunted drama of horror narrowly avoided.

Eastwood's depiction of Sully (played, with terse gravity, by Tom Hanks) begins with a shock: the captain's 9/11-esque vision of his plane crashing into New York buildings. The action of the film involves another shock: federal officials question Sully's judgment and subject him and Skiles (Aaron Eckhart) to an investigation that could cost him his job and even his pension.

Eastwood films the doomed flight with a terrifyingly intimate sense of danger, focussing on its existential center, the little red button under the pilot's thumb. The film movingly depicts Sully's modest insistence that he was just doing his job and the collective courage of flight attendants, air-traffic controllers, police officers, and the passengers themselves.

But, throughout, Eastwood boldly thrusts attention toward the aftermath of the flight: the nerve-jangling media distortion of events and personalities, plus the investigators' ultimate weapon, a computer simulation of the landing, a movie on which Sully's honor depends.

The result is Eastwood's dedicated vision of moviemaking itself.