(USA, 96 min.)
Dir. Clint Eastwood, Todd Komarnicki
Starring: Tom Hanks, Aaron Eckhart, Laura Linney, Skyler
White
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| Tom Hanks stars in Sully |
Sully has so much
cheese one might think it’s a Steven Spielberg movie. It’s not, however, a
Spielberg film. It’s a Clint Eastwood flick.
Who knew that Dirty Harry could be so sappy? There's Bridges of Madison County, yes, but Clint Eastwood's Meryl Streep movie is a beast of overwhelming tragedy. Sully proves that Eastwood directs a film with economy, finesse, and efficiency, but it reveals that sentimentality really isn’t his strong suit. It’s true that Mr. Eastwood makes grown men cry with the masterful knockout punch of Million Dollar Baby, yet Sully is so awkwardly lame that one may shed tears for different reasons. Sully is Eastwood’s War Horse.
It proves disappointing to find Sully so cringe-worthy since the subject, pilot Chelsey “Sully”
Sullenberger (played by a sturdy Tom Hanks), deserves a film portrait from
someone of the calibre in which Eastwood was working right through to 2009. The
film chronicles Sully’s undeniably heroic feat of 15 January 2009 in which he
used decades’ worth of flying experience and true grit to land a failing
commercial aircraft on the Hudson River. All 155 passengers and crewmembers
survived, the film shows with this brave tale.
The crash is absolutely terrifying and it’s a marvel that
anyone survived, as Sully reveals in
some thrilling flashbacks as the pilot relives the ordeal. These sequences show
Eastwood in his element as both the technical finesse and the intense realism
of the scenes put the audience in a cabin controlled by two men drawing from
great experience. In these scenes, Sully
lets the audience witness a hero’s bravery while riding shotgun and it’s an
impeccable feat.
Sully, however,
isn’t quite as brave as the man who shares its name. For a biopic about a man
who risked 155 lives, including his own, it’s an awfully safe film.
The real problem here is the mawkish and didactic screenplay
by Todd Komarnicki, which struggles with the human element that Sully
ultimately champions in an eleventh-hour pitch to clear his name. Komarnicki
(whose previous writing credit is 2007’s Halle Berry bargain bin thriller Perfect Stranger) certainly displays a
laudable effort of research in terms of the protocols, habits, and behaviour by
pilots and flight crew during a crisis, but Sully
is very awkward as it tries to squeeze drama out of an astounding feat that
ended happily for most parties involved.
The plane hit some birds. The engines failed. It had an
emergency landing. The passengers got a little wet and chilly, but everyone
pulled together and survived in a miraculous stroke of timing.
Sully tries to
make the landing controversial, though, with a heavy-handed storyline involving
a hearing from the National Transportation Safety Board that turns into a witch-hunt
as some panelists look to take down the perceived hero who grounded one of
their planes and put numerous lawsuits on their table. Even a cursory glance at
Sully’s story, however, reveals the film’s gross inaccuracy. While dramatic
embellishment and creative license are all part of turning fact into fiction, Sully strains the story to the point at
which it loses credibility. There’s no need to defend Sully’s actions or use
them to manipulate audiences. The trial, however, is just a loose dramatic
device that lets streams of Average Joes commend Sully for being a hero.
The hearings, however, are nowhere near as big a trial for
the viewer as the scenes of Sully speaking on the phone with his wife (Laura
Linney) in which blunt sentimentality and tinkly piano music reminds the
audience that Sully’s both a victim and a hero in this ordeal, but whatever the
error in judgement, the risk was worth it. A sledgehammer to the face could not
be as on the nose as Sully is. These
conversations come and go with awkward randomness. Even the origami vomit bags
from which the Denzel Washington plane crash movie Flight materialised had more finesse.
Like Sullenberger, though, Hanks makes the most out of a bad
situation. He is resolutely strong as the resilient pilot. His temperament is
calm and his manner doesn’t shake. Hanks’ Sullenberger never wavers: doubt
flickers on the actors face just to confirm to the hero that he did the right
thing. Although Sully has no easy
clip for awards night or no bravura moment like the finale of Captain Philips, it shows that, as with
last year’s Bridge of Spies, Hanks
has a subtle all-American humanity that he can channel into a character with
expert ease.
Eastwood isn’t quite as subtle with the emotional cues that
land about as elegantly as a plane does on a river. Hanks’s strong performance
doesn’t find a fair counterpart in most of the film’s supporting members,
including some reliable actors, as too many players ham it up for the camera to
create a message that the real hero of January 15th was an
all-American spirit. It’s fair to see a plane landing safely in post-9/11 New
York City as a rallying point, but Sully’s
insistence on trucking in so many characters to reiterate the same point, like the
hotel manager who gives Sully a warm embrace or a make-up girl who kisses his
cheek, are the squarest bits of hero worship one may see. The end credits
sequence, finally, which reunites the original crew and passengers of Sully’s
fateful flight, is frankly embarrassing as the real Sully gives a post-script
pep talk. Eastwood isn’t really one to inspire a group hug and, unfortunately,
it shows.
Sully is now in
theatres.
