Enjoyable but flawed

Rating: 7/10 (14 October 2016)

This is a film of two parts; the story of Sully and his crew and the story of the NTSB investigation of the incident.
The first part is dealt with well; we get a good picture of the life of air crew - living in hotels away from home and being involved in the myriad of tasks and issues that the travelling public never get to know about. The characterisations are believable and involving.
The second part is not dealt with well at all. The film presents a gross caricature of the NTSB investigators as being self satisfied bureaucrats who have already decided what occurred and who is to blame - that is Sully. This is not how it works, in this and most other investigations.
The reason for this is obvious - to create a villainous counterpoint to the heroic flight crew. But the whole thing is so one dimensional. I almost laughed when towards the end one of the investigators starts gushing admiration for Sully at a public hearing.
There was no need to do this - a more interesting and involving story would have been to portray the challenges felt by the NTSB team. A heavy responsibility to get to an account of what happened and why and to make a judgement about cause and contributory factors. Perhaps portray a back story of an investigation which went wrong with significant consequences.
But hey ho - why let facts spoil a good story?