Good depiction of heroism

Rating: 7/10 (15 January 2017)

Sully features a strong performance by Tom Hanks as the Captain of a fateful US Airways flight that skirted death by a miraculous successful water landing in the Hudson River after taking off from Laguardia airport in NYC.
This reminded me a bit of the fictitious movie Flight, where the pilot did something heroic, then was questioned every which way about why it happened. In this case, why could you not get back safely to an airport.
We know the ending of the event, but Sully gives you a behind the scenes feeler into what happened afterwards.
The weakness of the film is that there was that one point (the takeoff incident) that was the focus, nothing else. Eastwood as director tried to bring in other events in Sully's life about his love of flying, his youth, his relationship with his wife, but those added really very little to the story.
I would have liked to see more info about the co-pilot, excellently played by Aaron Eckhert. That might have helped support the story better. But maybe there was no drama there to build on. Eastwood tried to build some supporting drama, but his only real focus was the crew's reaction after the poop hit the fans, literally. That left very little to excite the viewer.
The film takes some swipes at bureaucracy, and the often times idiocy of people who were not there taking judgment. It's unclear if the FAA questioned ANY of the passengers who had survived, or whether they just investigated based on black box data.
The flight scenes are terrifically realistic, and the heroism of the entire crew under fire was just incredible. I recommend Sully as a very good depiction of a real life event. It's a film that is worth seeing in spite of the short focus of the plot. Enjoy.