One of the main problems faced by Clint Eastwood as the director of the movie Sully is that the famous episode of Captain Chesley Sullenberger discovering that his airplane was disabled and managing to turn it around and land it in in the Hudson River lasted a total of 208 seconds.
And everybody knows that story.
But what not many people knew about until now was that there was a big investigation of the episode that threatened to destroy Sully Sullenberger's reputation and career: The insurance company and the National Transportation Safety Board said he should have flown back and landed at the airport, and they had evidence to support their claim.
Sully is a very well-made movie with a good deal of mystery and suspense and very effective special effects. But I wonder, considering how little story it has to tell, Why it didn't concentrate a little more on the reasons for the investigation. The main problem is that everybody is in such a hurry that the hearing is held before some of the essential evidence is in, and this makes for a somewhat unconvincing end to what is otherwise a pleasingly realistic picture of a lot of people, from flight attendants on up, doing their jobs with professionalism and admirable lack of panic, the way things should be done.
There is also a slight problem during the first half of Sully involving shifts of point of view and continuity between what really happened and what could have happened and what Sully dreams about happening; one flashback seems to be there only to introduce a single line of dialog, advising a very young Sullenberger to fly, not think, which is an often repeated idea that gets more support than you might expect. The theme of interdependence between man and his machines is interestingly presented and never artificially resolved.
There's very little Hollywood in Sully, but the questions it raises will stick in your mind.
