95 minutes, Biography/Drama
When talking film directors, they don’t come much more reliable than Clint Eastwood (director of CHANGELING, GRAN TORINO and AMERICAN SNIPER). Particularly when presenting a true to life story.
When talking lead actors, they don’t come much more reliable and appealing than Tom Hanks. He too has worked on a number of incredible true stories (CAPTAIN PHILLIPS, CAST AWAY and SAVING MR BANKS to name a few).
When talking SULLY, an adaptation of the autobiography “Highest Duty” by Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger – the celebrated pilot of that United States Airways flight that made an emergency landing in New York’s Hudson River on January 15th of 2009 – the pairing of Clint Eastwood and Tom Hanks surely means SULLY couldn’t be in better hands, right?
Wrong!
To no fault of Tom Hanks whatsoever, it turns out that a 30 minute episode of Air Crash Investigations is more insightful and consistently structured than this truly disappointing bio film. An insightful opening that operates as a behind-the-scenes introspection of Sullenberger (Hanks) as he cooperates with the investigation into the emergency landing (or crash as investigators prefer to call it) and the toll that constant media attention & fame is having on “Sully” and his wife (played by Laura Linney), certainly offers viewers an alternative and valuable perspective from this event. But much of that value is lost when the screenplay goes quite off the radar by suddenly and unnecessarily diverting its attention toward Sullenberger’s youth and by adopting the wrong time to re-enact flight 1549’s frightening yet miraculous ordeal. Even more inexplicable is how this sequence is repeated later in the film, only this time where it heightens the drama, not hinders it. SULLY does climb in altitude by the end, placing its focus back to the themes explored at the start, though unfortunately these more absorbing plot points do remain underwritten in a film that promises much more than it delivers.
2.5 out of 5
Moviedoc 
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