Miraculous Heroes

Rating: 8/10 (2 December 2016)

This review of Sully: Miracle on the Hudson is spoiler free
**** (4/5)
ON 9TH November the headlines and Social Media sites were riddled with images and headlines of Donald Trump winning the Presidential Election, and in our media saturated world where we are bombarded by images of heroes and villains overtaking the news. That seems like one of the more normal stories. However, if you go back seven years to January 2009 we were introduced to an unlikely hero when the headlines read "Miracle on the Hudson" the image was of a passenger jet (Airbus A320) floating on the Hudson River, the plane had all 155 passengers stood on the wings. On the cold afternoon of January 15th 2009 Captain Chesley Burnett Sullenberger III nicknamed 'Sully' was doing his normal duty of flying a full capacity passenger jet from LaGuardia Airport in New York until his flight path was interrupted by a flock of Canadian geese, a couple of those geese landed in the engine. In the cockpit Chesley and his co pilot/best friend Jeff Skiles were thinking of a rather bizarre scenario of how they could land the jet, they spent 209 seconds thinking about how they could pull it off, without harming any passenger. Everyone on board was panicking while the disabled jet went gliding towards New York's Hudson River until it landed all 155 passengers and crew were saved; Sully was hailed as a national hero.
Based on Sully's best selling memoirs Highest Duty: My Search for What Really Matters, Clint Eastwood's Sully explores the untold story of this unlikely hero and how he went from being heralded by everyone he walked past to being constantly investigated, in many seemingly never ending court hearings where he is sat with his best friend/co pilot who is in the form of a witness as he is worried about losing his pilot license. It seems hard to find an actor who can sell this look very convincingly but Eastwood seemed to have his mind set on Tom Hanks who is transformed into the exact doppelganger of Sully, and Hanks' performance as our hero is electrifying. The movie opens around a year after the miraculous incident with Sully envisioning his own demise by having a dream of the event happening differently, with the plane he was piloting ending up in a building killing and injuring everyone in the immediate vicinity of the explosion, stepping into the territorial recreation of 9/11. When he wakes the people around him are constantly worried even his wife Lorrie Sullenberger (Laura Linney), thinks that her husband isn't the same anymore. His best friend Jeff Skiles (Aaron Eckhart) seems to be the only one who can bring him back as he is always there with him as someone to rely on for help. Director Eastwood made this story in his own typical style with the story telling itself as the film unfolds, there are many slow moments were nothing much happens Hanks' charisma manages to pull us through the film's slower moments were the narrative is sadly left empty. Though when we get to the showing of the event we it becomes a lot faster showing the panicking passengers and the cockpit with Skiles and Sully taking charge of the jet which is hurtling out of control.
It's a clever use of editing that's on show as the story manages to hold all these things together with some gripping but sadly limited drama. The event itself is beautifully done filled with tense moments and thrilling camera pans showing the inside and around the outside of the jet; though granted the familiarity with other air disaster movies takes a giant chunk out of the story but Hanks and Eckhart manage to keep the film going and try to strive away from the overall familiarity. There are two moments when the narrative of the story's history takes a hold of Sully's life told in little snippet type flashbacks both of them are set around the time when he is in training, the first when he is just a child aged around 13 when he lands a bi plane successfully, the second shows him flying a damaged fighter jet in the air force, it's another moment that's added to the overall premise making it slightly more human. The scenes after the incident mainly contain of never ending court hearings donned by Mike O'Malley's Charles Porter, who is always in constant disbelief at when Sully says that he had no choice as he could feel the plane go, he's more annoying to put up with.
Eastwood's retelling of the air disaster itself is the strongest part of this story helped by his camera transitions panning the outside, the panicking passengers screaming, inside the cockpit and back again which are all wonderfully adept and gives the film a bit of a Hollywood feel but its impressive nonetheless. The sheer sense of speed of the gliding jet attempting a landing on the frigid waters, the attention to detail the pacing of each disaster scene and sense of overall verisimilitude its all Paul Greengrass level stuff and shouldn't be a problem for Eastwood. Though the premise oddly feels familiar with other real life air disasters, the sense of heroism in this story takes a gripping hold and just the recreation of history repeating itself is nicely done with brutal beauty,. Altogether Sully is a beautiful depiction of history repeating itself, buoyed by powerful performances that are nothing less than Oscar-worthy.
VERDICT Hanks takes flight in yet another powerful Oscar-worthy title role performance, which is gripping, thrilling and certainly one of the best air disaster movies ever.
8/10 thrilling.