Sully

Based on a true story, Sully follows Tom Hanks’ Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger as he and his copilot (Aaron Eckhart’s Jeff Skiles) are forced to land their commercial airliner in the Hudson River after both engines fail. It’s perhaps not surprising to note that filmmaker Clint Eastwood has infused Sully with a deliberately-paced and thoroughly subdued feel, and yet it’s clear that the movie often fares much better than one might’ve anticipated – with the strong performances and inherently compelling narrative compensating for Eastwood’s somewhat erratic execution. It’s clear, too, that Sully benefits substantially from Todd Komarnicki’s time-shifting screenplay, as the film leaps backwards and forwards in time and documents the now-infamous crash from a variety of differing perspectives. (Hanks’ Sully remains a consistent anchor, of course.) And while the jumbled structure doesn’t always work – the midsection occasionally meanders to a somewhat palpable degree – Sully manages to paint a fairly vivid picture of an event with which most viewers are keenly familiar. The end result is a solid entry within Eastwood’s relatively strong body of work, with the movie’s sporadically clinical approach (eg a climactic NTSB meeting that feels longer than necessary) allayed by a continuing emphasis on engrossing images and sequences.

*** out of ****

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