'SULLY' which I caught at my favoured local independent movie theatre this week is the real life story of Chesley 'Sully' Sullenberger who captained the US Airways Flight 1549 on January 15th 2009 that soon after departing New York's LaGuardia Airport bound for Charlotte Douglas International Airport in North Carolina, hit a flock of geese crippling both engines of the Airbus A320 that he was piloting. Based on Sully's autobiography 'Highest Duty', this film is Directed and Co-Produced by Clint Eastwood and tells the against the odds story of how 'The Miracle on the Hudson' as it came to be known, unfolded. The film cost US$60M to make, premiered in the US on September 9th, and has so far taken US$57M at the Box Office since its wider general release. Both Eastwood and Tom Hanks in the lead role as Sully, have been highly praised as Director and Actor respectively.
The film opens after the fact with Sully (Tom Hanks) waking with a start in a hotel room having dreamt that the plane he was piloting crashes into a building in downtown New York in a ball of flame causing countless casualties and collateral damage. Of course we already know the story, but we are re-living the world inside Sully's head after he begins to doubt that he made the right decision in choosing to ditch his stricken aeroplane on the Hudson River. Those doubts have been cast by the air crash investigators at the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) who Sully and his Co-Pilot First Officer Jeff Skiles (Aaron Eckhart) have to front up to the very next day and explain away why they chose the course of action they did, when all the evidence so far available indicates that a much more safer option existed.
As the days following unfold, we see through flashback Sully's early flying lessons in a crop dusting bi-plane in his late teens, and then another example of his flying prowess in bringing down a partially stricken jet during his Air Force days. Sully has been flying for over forty years with a 100% successful track record having delivered over one million passengers securely during that time. He is a career pilot, looking at retirement and consulting in aviation safety. He speaks with his wife Lorrie (Lara Linney) often on the phone, as he has not yet been able to return home after the incident because of the prompt and ongoing investigations and the testimony that he and Skiles need to provide.
Sully has been hailed hero, but he doesn't really feel like one he says in a television interview given the hounding he is receiving and the questions raised over his decision making process. The media have set up camp outside his family home, and the news channels are full of reports of Sully's heroism and quick thinking that saved all 155 souls on board. Everybody loves a hero, and in Sully the people of New York and America were delivered one after the Global Financial Crisis late the year before, and New York's previous disasters involving planes. But despite this, Sully still has doubts when the NTSB claim that one engine was sub-idling and therefore Sully could have made safe passage to nearby Teterboro Airport at New Jersey, or return to LaGuardia.
Increasingly we get a sense that the NTSB is holding Sully & Skiles guilty until proven innocent despite the fact that every soul on that plane survived. In the background the insurance company could be calling the shots claiming pilot error, which if found to be the case will see an end to Sully's career, his track record, his reputation and his retirement plan. The NTSB have loaded all available data into their flight simulators to exactly replicate the conditions and circumstances that Sully and Skiles described to them, and the overwhelming feedback after repeated tests is that safe passage could have been made to both Teterboro and LaGuardia. Sully however, is steadfast in his conviction that at an altitude of just 2,800 feet, three minutes into the flight and over a heavily populated metropolitan area that he simply did not have the time, the speed or the altitude to guide his aeroplane to a safe airport landing.
To ensure his voice his heard, Sully arranges for human pilot simulations to be conducted using identical conditions and circumstances and for these to be shown during a public hearing. These however, end with successful airport landings, which Sully counteracts again with an argument accounting for realistic human reactions, and the following of emergency protocols which would have caused a delay in reaction time not accounted for in these most recent piloted simulations. He also asks how many times those pilots had been allowed to 'practice' their landing of such an unprecedented emergency scenario, and was advised, up to seventeen times! Sully had one chance to make a split second decision in a life or death situation that didn't exist in any flight simulation programme under the set of circumstances that transpired that day.
The gathered Board at the public hearing concede the point and agree to run the piloted simulations once again for all to see, but this time with a 35 second delay before any emergency manoeuvres are instigated so approximately matching Sully's reaction time. Both flights to Teterboro and back to LaGuardia result in the plane crashing either into a populated area, or into a pier on the Hudson with catastrophic effects for all under both simulated scenarios. After a break in the proceedings, the Board announced that the left side engine had been recovered from the Hudson with preliminary reports saying that it had been completely destroyed by the bird strike, and could not therefore have sub-idled or provided the required thrust for a safe return bound landing, again bearing out Sully's earlier claims.
In the final analysis, the NTSB confirms that Flight 1549 was an unavoidable accident and that under such circumstances both Sully and Skiles undertook the best possible actions with the best possible outcomes to save lives. Sully concludes that the outcome was not just his and his First Officer's doing, but also that of the Ferry Boat operators, the Police, his on-board crew and all those who worked so quickly and diligently to have those evacuated off the stricken plane and out of the frigid Hudson River within 24 minutes of the aircraft going down.
Tom Hanks plays everyman Sully convincingly and with a stoic realism that is measured, considered, confident and grounded as a man just doing his job. Eastwood proves once again what a fine Director he has become, being a veteran of 35 feature films under his belt as Director alone. Here he has crafted a fine story around a remarkable brief incident that could have turned out considerably worse than it did, but for the skill, experience and fortitude of one man in control when the chips were down. An engaging, thought provoking film that is well told, well acted out, and an unravelling of what happened after that most of us, were hitherto unfamiliar with. This is Hanks film and as a reluctant hero he is once again very watchable and believable just as he was in Spielberg's 'Bridge of Spies' and Greengrass' 'Captain Phillips'. Certainly well worth the price of your ticket.
-Steve, at Odeon Online-
