Brace For A Slight Impact.

Rating: 6/10 (30 May 2017)

What can you say about a mild-mannered elderly pilot who in 128 seconds diagnosed the problem with his US Airways passenger jet, reviewed his options, and chose the only one available which, despite the dangers, was overcome by the mild-mannered elderly pilot's skill as a flier? Not a hell of a lot.
You need to build a full-length feature film around a few minutes of extreme stress and ultimate catharsis. Captain Sullenberger was a hero who ditched his huge airplane in the middle of the Hudson River with none of his 153 passengers suffering more than a scratch or two. That was January of 2009, which prompts me to observe that time is beginning to fly almost as fast as an L-1011 these days.
But how do you fill up the movie? In classical narratives you require a protagonist who's trying to accomplish something and an antagonist who's trying to stop him from getting it done, but there's nothing like that in Sully's story. Everyone did was he was supposed to do -- not just the captain but the co-pilot, the flight attendants, the passengers, and the first and second responders. Given the circumstances -- the loss of power over both engines because of a bird strike -- it could hardly have turned out better.
In such circumstances you need to provide the audience with enough information to infer the non-existent antagonist. In this case, the targets were easy: the "suits." That would be the National Transportation Safety Board and the insurance companies who stand to lose a great deal of money. So the modest and unassuming Sully must be called before a board of inquiry that looks exactly like the setting of an appellate courtroom. The judges sit up there at the long bench, full of evidence, pomposity, cynicism, and authority, while looking down at Sully and the other prisoners, I mean witnesses, below. The judges aren't chosen for their beauty either. They frown a lot and use tones of voice that are ripe with innuendo.
Does Sully come through this and all the stresses associated with celebrity victorious -- in one piece? Are you kidding? If he hadn't, there would be no movie. So the film fakes its heavies. It also lacks sufficient technical detail so that the audience can't follow with any accuracy just what it is that Sully and his first officer are doing during the emergency.
The procedures aren't that complicated. The emergencies described in a TV series like "Mayday" ("Air Crash") are laid out so that even a non-techie can follow them flawlessly. But that would require a narrator, and this isn't a story about technology. It's a story about one man -- Captain Chesley Sullenberger and his behavior under stress. The other characters, his first officer and even his wife, Laura Linney, are strictly ancillary. It's a character study and it's well played.
On the surface it doesn't give star Tom Hanks much to do because Sully was quiet and always controlled. But there's the challenge. Hanks has to convey emotions with the slightest changes of his facial expressions, a slight squint, a barely perceptible smile, the blankness of a focused attention. As for his voice it never changes except for a few second while the airplane is gliding earthward, or rather waterward, and he has to speak to the Air Traffic Controllers because a shortage of time demands it.
There's nothing spectacular about the film. The CGIs are modest. Nobody shrieks with anger or with terror. Everyone is respectful and polite. Hardly anyone sobs. And nobody's head gets wrenched out of its socket. Even the suits, sitting up there in all their grandeur, come around at the end and freely, apologetically, admit that Sully did exactly the right thing under existing conditions.
He really DID too. The Airbus A-320 that he was flying was definitely not built with the prospect of a ditching in mind. The airplane has two big jet engines, one hanging low under each wing. The object in landing on water is to keep the airplane as level as possible because if it touches tail down, the nose will pitch forward forcefully and the stop will be abrupt and destructive. And of course if the pilot lands nose down, he's humped. But a smooth, level landing on water us almost impossible with two huge objects hanging from the wings. If the airplane isn't kept almost exactly level, one engine with catch the water sooner than the other, the airplane will spin around in the direction of the lowest engine and possibly disintegrate. Sully was lucky he was over the smooth Hudson River and not the open sea.
Clint Eastwood has chosen to show the emergency landing in several disjointed flashbacks but we never lose track of events or of where we are. Sully is a very intelligent man, a highly skilled pilot and deserves his celebrity, however much he may or may not have wanted it. Generally, a nice job, a full-length film built around a few minutes of extreme danger that doesn't lose the viewer's interest.