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.  

R.I.P.D. Review

R.I.P.D. desperately wanted to be a franchise. It will never happen, but man did it want to be. What's been done here is director Robert Schwentke (RED) decided that instead of sticking with the last obscure comic book adaptation he made and successfully turned into a hit (which coincidentally opened against this film) he would go on and make another one with the hopes that he could push another three or four films out of it and be set for the rest of his career. It makes sense and they obtained all the right parts to make R.I.P.D. a flashy summer bonanza. We have the two big name leading men, we have a large enough budget to pull off some serious action scenes and CGI and they have source material that in some corner of the globe has a fan base that might appreciate it while also riffing on plenty of other, very successful, summer blockbusters before it. Why this didn't work at all though seems to be from a lack of any kind of faith in the project. Though, the studio shouldn't have been surprised by its final product as this comes to us courtesy of the guys who wrote such things as The Tuxedo, Aeon Flux and Clash of the Titans. What exactly were they expecting? They wanted a mindless actioner that told the familiar story of a buddy cop film where the older, experienced cop gets a rookie partner and they fight at first and can't stand one another only to have that relationship blossom into something special by the end of their first adventure together. That, with Men in Black-level genre elements thrown in. It is an easy comparison to make, but that is essentially what R.I.P.D. is. Take out the aliens and replace them with dead people, take out the government and replace it with God. Simple as that. Hire a few studio writers and a director who was able to make a profitable enough hit with his previous potential franchise-starter and you have all the ingredients, right? The failure of this film presents solid proof that the system doesn't always work and the calculated way in which these studios try to push new franchises down our throats doesn't pay off when you're trying too hard and R.I.P.D. is trying way too hard to be something it didn't have to be.