Release: Friday, September 9, 2016

[Theater]

Written by: Todd Komarnicki

Directed by: Clint Eastwood

The Miracle on the Hudson is a perfect fit for good ole Clint Eastwood’s fascination with heroism and how Americans celebrate heroes. The story of how a commercial airline pilot managed to improvise an emergency water landing in the Hudson River mere minutes after takeoff from LaGuardia Airport on January 15, 2009 without sacrificing any lives in the process seemed, even at that time, primed for the big screen treatment. It was an event too unique to be left alone.

Sully turns out to be the movie anticipated. It’s confidently acted, noble in its pursuit of the truth, and just somber enough in its paralleling of this particular incident with the horrors that occurred on September 11, 2001. Tom Hanks, playing Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger, once again proves he’s one of the best in the business when it comes to portraying decent, upstanding individuals with reputations to defend. The profile contrasts how his decision to land on an icy river instead of return to the airport was perceived by the public, who viewed the act as courageous and necessary, while internal investigations within the NTSB and the FAA sought out all the little details that could prove the difference between human error and legitimate equipment failure.

The film feels natural and self-contained, representing one of Eastwood‘s most focused and disciplined efforts in recent years. Very little goes to waste, be they measured doses of world-building — the mundanity of air travel from the perspectives of crew and passengers alike — or supporting roles fostering an atmosphere of relief and gratitude in the aftermath. Alongside Sully there is First Officer Jeff Skiles (a mustachioed Aaron Eckhart) who provides his unwavering support throughout. He doesn’t have nearly as much to do as his costar but Eckhart is nonetheless effective, as is embattled wife Lorraine Sullenberger (Laura Linney) who can only contact her husband through brief telephone calls amidst media chaos threatening to consume their private lives.

Eastwood’s dramatization of the crash itself is wisely restrained, with moments of peril scattered throughout a narrative that is more concerned with what happens next, specifically how the Captain is supposed to relay what actually happened to those who were not there in the cockpit. It’s a tale of almost two movies — that which occurs on the flight itself, which is staged extremely realistically (almost to a fault for nervous flyers I’m sure), and that which occurs on the ground in the investigation process. Much of Sully broods in a strange psychological state somewhere between reality and surreality, with Sullenberger unable to rid himself of vivid images of what could have happened while grappling with the notion of his instant celebrity. Those flashes of a nightmarish scenario here represent the more striking and unsettling visual parallels to 9/11. It tends to raise the hair on your arms.

In a film that prioritizes achievement over practicality, it’s perhaps not surprising that members of the NTSB — here represented by Mike O’Malley (Nickelodeon’s Global Guts, anyone?) as Charles Porter, Jamey Sheridan as Ben Edwards and Anna Gunn as Elizabeth Davis — are all fictional creations inserted for the purpose of having some sort of antagonistic presence. (Flocks of birds, apparently, only serve as villains when directed by Alfred Hitchcock.) Why Eastwood needed to vilify one group while heralding another is beyond me, and it is a major issue in a film that otherwise dedicates itself wholeheartedly to realism.

Barring Hollywood’s never ending desire to conflate actual, real-world drama with that which can be synthetically created for the sake of perpetuating traditional storytelling models, Sully manifests as a heartfelt “thank you” to an individual who will probably forever claim that all he did was his job.

Recommendation: I have this feeling actual pilots or aspiring pilots will get a bigger kick out of the stresses endured by this flight crew. Lessons learned by the layperson: 1) being heralded a hero doesn’t always feel as such; 2) the NTSB, despite what Eastwood portrays them as for three-quarters of his film, isn’t really comprised of bloodthirsty, vindictive asses (see the enormously contrived ending scene); 3) New Yorkers are some damn resilient people. If there’s any real lesson to be taken away from Sully, it’s perhaps best summarized by one of the captain’s final reflections: he didn’t save all these people based on his actions alone. It was a real team effort, from the immediate response of Port Authority and NYPD officials, to the actions taken at Air Traffic Control, to the calmness of his entire flight crew and the bravery of the passengers themselves. A true crowd-pleaser. 

Rated: PG-13

Running Time: 95 mins.

Quoted: “This is the Captain. Brace for impact.”  

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Photo credits: http://www.impawards.com; http://www.imdb.com