He uses a gun only in extremis and he never throws a punch in anger. The film dramatizes pilot Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger’s landing of a loaded commercial airliner on the Hudson River without a single fatality, a real-life event known in popular vernacular as the “Miracle on the Hudson”. So just the act of touching the water began to tear open the metal skin on the outside of the aircraft, in the back. But equally so, many things went right within the aviation system prior to the bird strike. Maybe take a longer timeline and create a story about how hero worship damages the hero.
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Schrift looked back and spotted the captain. Clint Eastwood has chosen to show us a real hero through simplicity and without any frills emphasizing on the human spirit over technology. And once again, he’s working from life.
It’s about Captain Chelsey Sullenberger, the US Airways pilot who was forced to land a plane on the Hudson River after striking a flock of geese.
Hanks portrays Sullenberger as a man confident in his convictions who is initially uncomfortable by all of the media attention he receives and is somewhat shaken when the NTSB attempts to find fault with his actions despite the fact that he safely landed the plane in the Hudson with all 155 passengers on board exiting safely and accounted for.
While this man vs. machine conflict plays out, Sullenberger deals with the surreal experience of getting a hero’s welcome everywhere else he goes, whether dropping by a local bar or taking a jog through Times Square. Hence, the script – adapted from Higher Duty, an account co-written by Sullenberger – focuses not on the crash but on its protracted aftermath.
If you can recall American Sniper and how he lets the audience feel the situation, Eastwood puts the audience right in the cockpit crisis, with the captain and first officer Jeff Skiles played by Aaron Eckhart. We’re introduced to him in a NY hotel, where he awaits his interrogation. Most of Eastwood’s films during the past decade have been, at their best, proficiently made. And as it hits a high-rise and explodes, he wakes in a sweat. Rescue crews coordinated to safely bring the 155 people ashore from the freezing water, the city rejoiced, and Sully became a hero nearly as much for his modesty and desire to credit everyone involved as for his flying skill.
Eastwood also revealed that he felt motivated to bring this story forward because of its happy ending. But somehow it works.
The flight sequences necessarily have a lot of shots of an airplane flying low around New York City, and several shots of New Yorkers looking up from their office buildings.
Tom Hanks stars as the title character, a pilot who faced the toughest 208 seconds of his life on January 15, 2009. Eckhart is the most adaptable of actors. “That was the most terrifying part of the ordeal”. More recently, he’s been slotted into sidekick roles, but he still maintains a talent for shaking things up. Laura Linney as Sully’s wife Lorraine has nailed the emotions of the everyday wife and mother whose concerns are about how the incident would affect the family especially financially as her husband could well lose his job.
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The film’s denouement is basically a courtroom drama revolving around the crash and the rescue, which are meticulously staged and all the more gripping because of it, although there are one or two distracting inconsistencies. If he had restricted himself to the sign-off line paying tribute to the NY water police, divers and ferryboat crew who engineered the rescue, all would have been well. You should see this on an IMAX screen if possible. “Sully’s” real dramatic struggle is about overcoming all that.
