Sully cements Tom Hanks as a high quality serious actor, while telling an important story

Rating: Null/10 (1 March 2017)

Just saw Sully, the depiction of how Chesley Sullenberger landed a plane that lost both engines due to bird strikes on the Hudson on Jan. 15th, 2009. Hanks continues a path that led from Bossom Buddies to high quality serious acting, and those behind the writing and direction (Clint Eastwood's name is on it; I doubt he did that much actual work) did good work also. True stories in general are the most compelling, but one's first thought may be, "how could they make a whole movie out of a 200 second incident". But they did pull it off. It didn't show as much of Sully's backstory as I would have thought; only a few short scenes as a fighter pilot and such. The drama comes from the recreation of the flight itself, how Sully handled the emergency, and the NTSB confrontational hearing on the case.
"Birds" is the first CVR indication of emergency when 8 pound migrating Canada geese flew into both engines (that are built to withstand only up to 4 pound ones). Both lost function right away and Sully's 42 years of flight experience came to the fore. The NTSB hearing was whether he could have safely landed back at LGA or Teterboro or not. As he says at the end, Sully was not a hero, just someone who did his job and had many others helping, including the 1st officer Jeff Skiles (Aaron Eckhart), the emergency responders, the coast guard, etc. Part of the film's subject was how Sully was subjected to this media blitz he didn't want. Bottom line is he did the only thing he could do: land in the Hudson. And of course this was NOT the 1st time in history a plane made a water landing. Discounting sea planes there have been numerous time through history when pilots have made successful emergency water landings (the latest being US Air in 1989 and China in 1993). However this 2009 incident was the highest profile.
My favorite flight films are Flight of the Phoenix (1965) and Spirit of St. Louis (1955) both with Jimmy Stewart as the pilot. The worst one I ever saw was Denzel Washington's ridiculous Flight (2012). This one ranks near the top.