Quiet movie about Flight 1549 and its pilot

Rating: 8/10 (26 June 2017)

The heart of this movie is the spectacle -- beautifully staged and filmed -- of a passenger airplane landing on a river in the middle of a large city in the winter and all its passengers getting rescued. By anyone's standards, this is remarkable thing and the worthy subject of a 96-minute movie. Realizing this, Eastwood presents a realistic, appropriate and detailed film depiction of the crash. It was fascinating to watch, even though the viewer already knows how it ends.
The rest of the movie is a populist "little guy v. the man" kind of film, with the airline, the investigating committee and the insurers cast in the role of "the man", and the pilot (Tom Hanks) and co-pilot (Aaron Eckhart) in the role of the "little guy". In the end, the heroism is not just in landing the plane, but in being able to face with dignity and confidence the bureaucratic/financial firestorm that comes afterwards .
Hanks and Eastwood also engage in a sort of "portrait of heroism". They show us more about Sully and what kind of man he is. The pilot was just a man doing his job, but he did it well and he survived (in many ways) a life-changing accident that could have destroyed him. Is he a genuine hero? This movie makes that argument. America needs heroes; the movie industry loves making films about heroes. The movie was restrained in its flag-waving, thankfully.
I thought this was a good film, although maybe a little on the pensive side. It's worth about 7.5, but I'll round it up.