“This alternative glimpse, as well as Eastwood’s graceful staging of Sully’s darkest what-if fantasies, as well as the landing itself, makes “Sully” thoroughly engrossing and exciting to watch, even though viewers know the outcome”. Sounds like the end of the story, right?
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Manohla Dargis (New York Times): “The movie is economical and solid, and generally low-key when it’s not freaking you out”. The film ultimately becomes a kind of man versus technology parable; pitting Sully’s insistence that his decades of experience and second-nature feel for the operations of the jet led him to the correct decision while simulatations and analysis offer a competing scenario – and it’s a genuine testament to the actors and the filmmaking that the stakes of Sullenberger’s reputation and sense of self-worth being potentially besmirched really do end up feeling nearly as riveting as the life-or-death plane sequence. It’s moving, and establishes a dozen or so characters in a brief period of time well enough that we actually care about them. There are also a few flashbacks to Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger’s earlier days as both an amateur and a military pilot.
In reality, the NTSB conducted a routine investigation to ascertain the cause of the accident and ensure it wouldn’t happen again.
The reason: the plane had run into a flock of Canadian geese and was crippled, having lost power in both engines and with no airport nearby, thus threatening the lives of the 155 passengers and crew on board, including Sully’s co-pilot, First Officer Jeff Skiles, played by Aaron Eckhart. That he recklessly endangered the lives of his passengers.
In Sully, a seasoned airline pilot has to make a life or death decision in record time. In the one simulation where that was considered, the plane crashed trying to reach LaGuardia Airport. “If there were questions, it was to learn things”.
Sully movie review: Clint Eastwood’s pacing does the trick, but even so, in bits, Sully is a stretch and sometimes rather obvious in its heavy-handed intentions to honour a hero.
Knocking the film for creating an artificial villain, from a film criticism standpoint, is one thing.
But, overall, pretty damn good movie – absolutely worth seeing theatrically and a fine kickoff to the fall movie season. What if it damages the reputation of those involved?
“For those who are the focus of the investigation, the intensity of it is enormous”, Sullenberger said of the process, which he found “inherently adversarial, with professional reputations absolutely in the balance”.
SULLY is an interesting film because it does not shy away from the fact that it follows a fairly recent event that most people are quite familiar with. One of the most unexpected and well-executed decisions of the movie is to not start out with the crash.
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The NTSB investigators who feel they’ve been wronged by Hollywood’s need to entertain seem to have valid complaints, but that does not mean directors should stop making films based on true events.
