- Tim Riley
- Posted On
Eastwood and Hanks flying high in 'Sully' aviation drama
SULLY (Rated PG-13)
The famous “Miracle on the Hudson” landing of disabled US Airways Flight 1549 on a cold day in January 2009 in the frigid waters of New York’s Hudson River dominated the news cycle for many days and to this day remains etched in the public memory.
An instant hero was created in Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger, the veteran airline captain who piloted the Airbus A320 after its engines had been taken out at the low altitude of 2,800 feet by a flock of geese.
Capt. Sullenberger, a self-effacing Everyman, thought of himself as a man just trying to do his job while keeping his wits about him to save the lives of the 155 passengers and crew members onboard the crippled aircraft.
The ordeal unfolded during a period of 208 seconds and the challenge for the movie “Sully” was to turn the events of a short, yet terrifying white-knuckle ride into a full length feature film with plenty of drama.
It’s difficult to imagine any current actor better suited to playing the role of the titular character than Tom Hanks, a modern-day Jimmy Stewart who can pull off the essential Everyman character that “Sully” demands.
For his part, Clint Eastwood as the director of “Sully” knows his way around searing real-life drama, something he proved most recently with “American Sniper,” a film that received six Oscar nominations, including for Best Picture.
The combination of Tom Hanks and Clint Eastwood is the winning ticket for a high-flying adventure that soon comes down to Earth and requires plenty of personal, troubling reflections and great moments of tension to sustain the approximate 90-minute running time.
The fateful day begins uneventfully at New York’s LaGuardia airport, when the flight bound for Charlotte, North Carolina looks routine, even with three ecstatic late-arriving passengers excited to just barely get on the plane.
Speaking of the passengers, mostly ordinary folks traveling on business or to meet family, only a few are given just the slightest glimpse of any character, whether it’s a mother with an infant or some elderly ladies.
Nothing much is asked of the passengers except for the constant command to “brace for impact” and to keep heads down during the landing. That all passengers were saved meant, of course, that nobody was left behind or froze to death during the water rescue.
Capt. Sully was fortunate to have with him in the cockpit his co-pilot Jeff Skies (Aaron Eckhart), a looser, funnier guy who contrasted with Sully’s more reserved, quieter demeanor but was fully in agreement with the split-second decisions that had to be made.
In fact, later on during the hearings before the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), it was First Officer Skiles who corrected the inquiry about how a plane ended up “in” the Hudson River when he replied “On the Hudson.”
Both Sullenberger and Skiles were in sync with the belief that the daring and unprecedented landing on the water was a “controlled landing” that offered only the best outcome given the limited options.
The fact that Capt. Sully and his co-pilot remained cool and collected during crisis was a testament to their professionalism, though Sully later tells his wife Lorrie (Laura Linney) in a phone call that “I want you to know that I did the best I could.”
Because the forced landing consumes only a matter of minutes, the tension has to be developed in other arenas, and a film like this could use a few “villains,” so to speak, to drive the narrative that the harrowing experience had repercussions.
This tension is explored by the adversarial NTSB hearings in which lead investigator Charles Porter (Mike O’Malley) and panel members Ben Edwards (Jamey Sheridan) and Elizabeth Davis (Anna Gunn) insist that Sully had other options for an emergency landing.
The bureaucrats, naturally, question Sully’s judgment during intense grilling and forcefully contend that flight simulators and computer analysis demonstrate that a landing could have been made at LaGuardia or even in New Jersey.
Holding their ground, Sullenberger and Skiles manage to poke large holes in the line of questioning. On a side note, the airline itself could not have been thrilled to lose an expensive aircraft to a watery grave.
Outside the hearing room, Sully has to cope with a number of predicaments, from self-doubt worries about whether he did the right thing to having nightmares about crash landing into Manhattan buildings in a vision reminiscent of the 9/11 horrors.
What we already know, that is now reaffirmed by Eastwood’s skillful direction, is that Sullenberger and Skiles executed a successful water landing that created a national hero in the airline’s captain and “Sully” celebrates the valor and courage.
Sure, we know the story, but “Sully” is a finely-tuned, nail-biting drama that shows that a good result can come from a bad situation, while also portraying the heroic efforts of first responders who accomplished the rescue of everyone within 24 minutes.
Tim Riley writes film and television reviews for Lake County News.