SULLY Review

Sully is a slim 95-minutes. It swoops in with a harrowing opening sequence and then only lets its foot off the throttle just long enough to place viewers back at the beginning of 2009 and familiar with Captain Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger once again before thrusting them into the throws of the reasons this movie exists. The toughest challenge a movie about the "Miracle on the Hudson" was always going to face was going to be finding a new angle in which to present the story to audiences who were witness to an onslaught of media coverage around the actual event; what was there to the story we didn't already know? Turns out director Clint Eastwood and screenwriter Todd Komarnicki (who has only written three feature screenplays the last of which was the 2007 thriller Perfect Stranger starring Bruce Willis and Halle Berry) had plenty of material as the not so well documented aspect of the aforementioned "Miracle on the Hudson" was the fact the NTSB conducted an investigation as to whether or not Captain Sully could have in fact made it back to a runway instead of landing a pricey plane in the middle of a river. And so, what Eastwood has is a David and Goliath story of sorts where the line between good and bad is drawn early and distinctly with the script simultaneously evaluating the psyche of a man who happened to be in the right place during a bad situation that would result in him having to separate reality from the strange swirl of whatever kind of life was happening immediately following his unprecedented landing. And on many different levels, no less. This not so well publicized aspect of Sully's story combined with the revelatory state of mind Tom Hanks brings to his performance, some critical editing by Blu Murray (a frequent collaborator of Eastwood's, but someone who's never taken lead on one of his films) that lends these familiar events a whole new level of tension all packed into that slim running time make Sully a consistently perceptive interpretation of the events of January 15, 2009 that stands to be largely effective and appropriately affecting.

First Trailer for Clint Eastwood's SULLY Starring Tom Hanks

Since hearing there was going to be a film made about the story of Captain Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger that would be directed by Clint Eastwood and star Tom Hanks there has been the preconception this would be a film made solely for the purpose of winning awards while getting as close as one can to guaranteeing a hit out of a year-end drama. After seeing the first footage from the film in today's trailer premiere all those things still seem to be true, but there is now an added element of intrigue. For one reason or another there is clearly more substance behind the movie than what I expected to be little more than obvious studio awards bait. While it is probably hard for people such as Eastwood and Hanks to work on a project without really digging their creative juices into it there just seemed something about that project that felt as if it would get by on, and excuse the pun, autopilot. There are certainly many comparisons one could draw between the narrative Sully seems to be following and the Denzel Washington film, Flight, from a few years back, but given Eastwood's film is steeped in true events I can't imagine much of those comparisons not being excused. While I, personally, didn't follow the story of the "Miracle on the Hudson" past more than the initial reports that Sully and his crew had performed something of an unheard of landing on the water after both engines failed all the while rescuing every person on board there was apparently a fairly tense and lengthy investigation that took place afterward. This investigation looks to serve as the meat of the story here more so than the act of the rescue though I'm sure the landing will serve as a genuine set piece. All of that said, this trailer certainly did its job as I'm much more interested in the film than I was even yesterday. Sully also stars Aaron Eckhart, Laura Linney, Anna Gunn, Sam Huntington, Jerry Ferrara, Autumn Reeser, Holt McCallany, Mike O'Malley, and opens on September 9th, 2016.