Human Heroism Done Right

Rating: 10/10 (9 September 2016)

It was an aviation event the likes of which few, if any, in the world could ever recall happening. On January 15, 2009, US Airways Flight 1549, bound from New York's LaGuardia International Airport to Charlotte, North Carolina, was hit by a large flock of birds just thirty seconds after takeoff. The bird strike disabled and damaged both of the jet's engines; and though it managed to keep flight for another three minutes, there was no way it could return to LaGuardia, or make any attempts at an emergency landing at either JFK, Newark, or nearby Teterboro Airport in New Jersey. The flight's captain, Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger, made the split-second decision to ditch the aircraft in the Hudson River, rather than risk flying into any buildings. Incredibly, the aircraft, though damaged by the bird strikes and the water landing, stayed afloat long enough for rescue personnel to save the lives of all 155 people on that flight, an operation that took only twenty-four minutes in all. The incident has been into the highly engaging cinematic docudrama SULLY.
Based on the book "Highest Duty" by Sullenberger and Jeffrey Zaslow, the film, as directed by Clint Eastwood (who some time back traded his acting career for one focused solely on direction, though he had been doing both on and off since 1971's PLAY MISTY FOR ME), focuses in on the pressures that Sullenberger, excellently played by Tom Hanks (as always), underwent in the months following the crash. The media attention was enormous, but it was also highly scrutinizing as well. And in those months, Sullenberger and his co-pilot Jeffrey Skiles (Aaron Eckhart) went before a seemingly endless battery of hearings conducted by both the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transpiration Safety Board as to whether Sullenberger's judgment on that day was sound, given that flight simulations supposedly had shown that the plane could have accomplished either one of the four scenarios (return to LaGuardia; landing at JFK; Newark; or Teterboro) while achieving the same result that Hanks and Eckhart had achieved. But in the testimony the two men give, Hanks argues that the basic human element was totally left out of those scenarios. From the moment the bird strikes happened until US Airways 1549 ditched into the Hudson River, there were only 208 seconds (three minutes and twenty-eight seconds); and in that time, trying to fly the disabled craft onto a dry runway was totally unrealistic and could have resulted in the deaths of all onboard and even more on the ground.
Since restaging the actual saga of Flight 1549 would be a matter of getting all the details right, helped out by Sullenberger's own book and his four decades worth of flight experience, it was really up to Eastwood's direction, and Hanks' ability to underplay, to get into the mindset of "Sully" as he dealt with all the media and government attention that he, his wife (Laura Linney), and Eckhart went through in those months following what the media had deemed the "Miracle On The Hudson." Hanks deftly shows the struggles that Sullenberger faced, via flashbacks to that cold wintry day in the skies over the Big Apple, with respect to what he could have done differently (or what both the media and the government investigators think he could have done differently). But at no time during the actual FAA/NTSB hearings did Sully ever lose his cool and his composure. He merely pointed out that the human element needed to be taken into consideration, not just what some alternate computer simulation said could have been done, to facilitate the saving of everyone on Flight 1549; and the playback of the flight voice recorders clears up any questions as to the judgment and veracity behind Sully's decisions.
That this saga, which, like 1995's APOLLO 13 (which also starred Hanks) and 2015's THE 33, had a hugely successful outcome, should have been made into a movie probably shouldn't surprise anyone. But just as importantly, and also just like those films, SULLY, thanks to Hanks' usual great Everyman portrayal of Sullenberger, the kind of heroism on display is that of common people, including Hanks, his crew, his wife, the passengers, and the rescue personnel of New York City, and not just some comic-book, super-patriotic depiction of heroism that too much of Hollywood has been about in the 21st century. Nothing about the saga of US Airways Flight 1549, or the resulting Miracle On The Hudson, was cut-and-dried; it was reality, and Eastwood and Hanks should both be commended for making it that way, and successfully so.