Structural issues abound.

Rating: 6/10 (16 September 2016)

Clint Eastwood is back with yet another true story film. Unlike his last based on a true story flick, 'American Sniper', 'Sully' actually works pretty well. And it makes for a surprisingly gripping story at that. If you're unaware, the story is about an airline pilot. The same one that landed an airbus in the Hudson river in 2009. Naturally, this is his story. But it's told slightly differently than you'd expect. 60% of the film actually takes place after the incident and the other 40 is told through flashbacks that are triggered in some way. This was the aspect of the film that really suffered the most. There are so many flashbacks in this movie.
There are so many that this otherwise engaging story starts to feel disjointed. There are one or two that feel genuine and work fairly well, but the majority are just crammed in where ever they could fit them. It felt a lot like 'Suicide Squad' in that, these flashbacks didn't really serve much purpose. They almost felt like they had too much footage and decided to just stick it in somewhere.
The worst offender happens about twenty minutes in. The film opens after the water landing, of which we don't see. We see that Sully is being put on trial for endangering the lives of his passengers and crew. This plays out for about twenty minutes and is shockingly gripping I might add, and then it suddenly flashes to directly before the flight occurs. But it doesn't just end there. No, we sit for about twenty more minutes as we watch the entire accident occur.
This scene, and many other flashbacks like it, come out of nowhere and overstay their welcome. This one, in particular, does nothing for the film other than blatantly show you exactly what happened. And that isn't really a bad thing, but when the first twenty minutes of your movie is board meetings, it feels out place to jump to this plane scene. We all know the story, and the film does a great job of showing it subtly.
Yet, for some reason it stills shows the full event to you. It doesn't help push the story forward, nor does it build character. And, to make things worse, this very scene is shown again later in the film. With this second time actually feeling like it belonged there. When you tell a story like this through flashbacks, they have to drive things forward. A good example of this is 'Incendies'.
But 'Sully' just pushes in random footage that rarely helps the film in any way. This effects the pacing drastically. Watching these engaging trail sequences to only flip to a flashback makes this movie more of a lame roller coaster ride. Where you'll be exhilarated sometimes and just bored the rest of the time. It doesn't help that the shooting style is rather bland. The visual style of the film is very mute and stationary. Which can work, but here it just looks boring.
By now you are probably thinking that I hated this movie, but I didn't. In fact, I thought it was decent. This mainly has to do with the non-flashbacks aspects of this movie. When the film plays out uninterrupted it works very well. It's very restrained and subtle actually. The scenes that take place after the crash all felt like they served a purpose. Each one helped flesh out our main character or forward the plot with interesting new information that caused conflict.
Conflict that actually felt like it had weight to it. Each new piece of info that Sully receives is almost always something bad. And each time you can see him sink a little more into himself. And watching this kind of hurts. You know that he's a genuine guy and saved hundreds of lives, but there's always consequences. So when you throw consequences in a film like this they actually carry weight.
You don't want to see him put on trial because he just saved hundreds of people. But that's what happens, and it works very well. Of course, this couldn't have been accomplished without Tom Hanks. Who is typically great. The entire cast is actually pretty great. They all take on their character in interesting ways even if their character translates to nothing more than a line on a paper.
However, 'Sully' is ultimately a frustrating watch. That mainly has to do with the fact that this could have been great and just wasn't. There's an excellent movie in there and it's ruined by jumbled storytelling. Excessive flashbacks grind the film to a halt nearly every time they surface and never really help the film move along. This along with a boring look and bizarrely abrupt scene changes really hurt an overall good movie. The cast, crew and investigation aspects of the film are definitely its saving graces. Without them, we'd be left with another True Story flick to throw by the wayside.