When too much glorification is not a good thing

Rating: 6/10 (5 January 2017)

I'm sure that every one of you knows the story behind this film. A passenger plane dies in the air above NYC, and the captain pulls off a tricky save by landing the machine on the Hudson. A great job indeed. And one way too appealing to make a movie about.
But it's just too boring to tell a story about a person who did his job right and saved a lot of lives. Or that's what the cinema bosses might be thinking. So let's bring in some less genuine or relevant conflict about the corporate pigs who always aim to blame the little man, or about the confused wife and financial struggle back at home. Yeah, that's so much better, now we can actually root for our guy even more and see that even if you're a hero for the whole nation you still have severe issues to fix. And what would be better than seeing the little man prevail and beat the evil system fair and square for all the world to see?
Well, I don't know how exactly it was in reality, but the one created by Clint Eastwood was a bit too cloying to be appealing. Of course, it's impossible to criticize the work of one of the most esteemed actors-turned-director of late, featuring one of the most esteemed actors of the last decades, especially when it is about a true heroic story America could wholeheartedly call its own. So it's just easier to ignore the general lack of a true drama in this film and let yourself be tricked into spending a few bucks to watch something that would at last make you feel proud to be an American. After all, it's not just New York that was in a desperate need of good news, especially those about an airplane.
I'm not an American. Still, it's no problem for me to admit that what the real Chesley 'Sully' Sullenberger did was extraordinary. What the movie industry did with this story, however, is much farther from 'extraordinary' and much closer to 'sentiment exploiting and money grabbing'. Which of course is a form of art as well, just not as fine and noble as saving lives on board of a plane doing down.