Eastwood, Hanks, Eckhart and the Visual Effects Buoy a Decent Movie Struggling With a Really Thin Plot

Rating: 6/10 (17 December 2016)

I feel bad for not loving this movie. Cpt. Chelsea "Sully" Sullenberger is a hero and deserves credit along with his co-pilot Jeff Skiles for performing the Miracle on the Hudson. You would think the story would be ripe for a great movie. Throw in Tom Hanks and Clint Eastwood and you can almost picture people reading their names off the envelopes at the Academy Awards. The problem is that the while the subject matter of the story is interesting, the movie isn't very plot heavy and has to rely on the big budget special effects and reliving the crash over and over again to fill out the run time.
*Minor Spoilers Ahead* Captain Chelsea "Sully" Sullenberger (Tom Hanks) and Jeff Skiles (Aaron Eckhart) are the co-pilots of U.S. Airways Flight 1549. Due to birds flying into and then destroying 2 of their engines, they're forced to make an emergency landing. They're unable to manoeuvre the plane and they crash into the building in a fiery explosion. Sully then wakes up, the whole thing having been a nightmare. He's still reliving the incident, the crash having happened less than a week ago. While the media is celebrating the incident as a miracle and everyone loves Sully, he's facing upcoming hearings with the National Board of Transportation. They intend to prove that instead of landing in the Hudson River, he could have made it back to LaGuardia or neighbouring Teterboro Airport.
Instead of attacking the movie right away, lets talk about what I did like. You see the recreation of the landing several times (with different results because several of them are dreams) and the special effects are pretty impressive. A plane crash is a pretty dramatic event and the movie never fails to show how impressive of a feat The Miracle on the Hudson was. The effects never failed to be convincing and this movie needed them to be excellent.
Almost every performance from Tom Hanks in a dramatic role will get recognition come award season. The simple reason is that he's one of the best if not the best actor of his generation, he's just that good. I thought he was good in this but it was more of a workmanlike job. He's very stone-faced and serious (rightfully so) and he brings an intensity and fear to Cpt. Sullivan. I thought Aaron Eckhart was just as good as Skiles. He acts almost like a cheerleader for Sully but he's strong and his loyalty to Sully comes through in his acting. Laura Linney is okay as Lorraine, she's not given much to do but act concerned over the phone. Mike O'Malley, Anna Gun and the rest of the review board weren't very subtle but I think that was the fault of the writing. Sully paints them as sneering, one-dimensional jerks who have no idea what impartiality is.
Speaking of the review board, I feel like they could have explored that further. That would have been interesting but the investigation around Sully is so one-sided and with the board members being so poorly drawn, I couldn't get into it. I don't enjoy watching movies about decent people getting railroaded for little to no reason. I get that it's supposed to get your blood boiling but that doesn't make it anymore enjoyable to watch.
My problem with this movie is that the story behind what Cpt. Sullenberger did was amazing but there isn't enough plot in this movie. The movie is stretched so thin that they need the re-enactments just to hit the 1hr 30min mark. Take those out and the phone calls to his wife and I really don't know if you would have enough material for a movie. I got annoyed by the 3rd time they redo the plane crash including the dream fake-out at the beginning. I just found it irritating and while I respect them for wanting to tell this story, just focusing it over this small time period is a mistake. I also thought the flashbacks to previous times in Sully's life were pretty well filmed but they would be kind of jarring and the movie seemed a little choppy in the editing.
I didn't think this was a bad movie but I think this subject deserved a better one. It just ended up being kind of mediocre and I honestly would rather watch Flight before watching this again. A group of people this talented coming together should have made something fantastic and although I didn't hate it, I couldn't help being disappointed when Sully was done.