Sully Review

If a movie stars Tom Hanks there is a good chance I am going to like it and Sully is no exception to that rule.

Sully is directed by Clint Eastwood and stars Tom Hanks, Aaron Eckhart, and Laura Linney. Tom Hanks plays Captain Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger, who successfully landed US Airways Flight 1549 on the Hudson River in New York City in January 2009. The movie focuses on the plane landing itself as well as the investigation that takes place days after the incident. Aaron Eckhart plays First Officer Jeffery Skiles and Laura Linney plays Sully's wife, Lorraine Sullenberger.

Since the movie is called Sully, this movie either succeeds or fails on Tom Hanks' performance and for me that is where this movie succeeds the most. I thought Tom Hanks did a great job of bringing out the heroic side of Sully. He really felt like a regular guy that pulled off a remarkable feat by saving 155 passengers. There was this vulnerability to his character where you felt bad for him because of the investigation that followed after the crash. Having seen what he did to land the plane you know that he did something heroic, but you have the National Transportation Safety Board trying to figure out if he actually did the right thing and instead of saving people actually endangered them. Throughout the movie I found myself wondering if he actually did the right thing and you also see that on Tom's face where he too thinks he made a mistake. It was those moments where Tom questions what he did that really made me question his actions. I also liked that you got to see how Sully struggled with the new found popularity and being a celebrity. It was something that he wasn't comfortable with. One moment he is just a regular pilot and the next he is on every news station and people are shouting his name while he walks down the street. Tom Hanks' performance made that feel authentic.

Another thing that must work for this movie to succeed is the actual landing of the plane on the water. The scenes that showed this event were intense and had me on the edge of my seat, which is impressive given I already knew the outcome. One thing I liked about it was that they showed it from various angles. You first experience the landing from the cockpit with Sully and Jeffery. You see what they had to do inside the cockpit and the communication between them and air traffic control. I enjoyed getting to see how air traffic control handled the situation and their emotional connection to a single plane. You also get to experience it through the eyes of those on the plane itself. You see the calmness in the flight attendants and the fear in the passengers.

Sully wasn't a completely perfect movie for me though. I found the beginning of the movie to be fairly boring and was struggling to stay awake. The movie starts out a few days after the landing has occurred and Sully is still in New York while the investigation is going on. Sully is in a state of shock and struggling to comprehend what he just went through and I felt that since I haven't really seen what all he went through, I was emotionally disconnected to the character. After I finally saw what happened and got to experience the landing, I was more emotionally connected to Sully. Also during this part of the movie, Sully kept having visions of a plane flying into buildings in New York City and I found these to be a tad disturbing and slightly unnecessary. There was also a couple of one liners that seemed completely unnecessary and distracting.

Sully is a movie that overall I really enjoyed. It has solid performances from it's leads especially Tom Hanks. The movie started out pretty slow, but once it got into the details of the landing, I was fully engaged. I think that this is a movie that should be seen on the big screen because of how the landing plays out, the sound and visuals were fantastic. Sully probably won't go down as the best Tom Hanks movie but it is the best of his most recent ones.

4 out of 5 Stars