Green Goblin Reviews: Sully
Sully is a dad movie. By which, I mean that it is a motion picture that is compelling in its narrative, offers solid characters and interesting situations without branching off into abstract concepts that might confuse or alienate dad or dad-like archetypes in your day-to-day life. The dad movie comes in many varieties. From action (Die Hard, Indiana Jones, Taken, John Wick) to drama (Shawshank Redemption, Miller’s Crossing, Godfather, anything by Michael Mann) to comedy (Google Mel Brooks, kids). Just off of the films I’ve listed, that should tell you that designating something as a dad movie is not a detriment. Hell, one of those films is my favorite film ever. What defines a dad movie is its ability to be entertaining and easily digestible in its given state. Oh, and one more thing. Dad movies are about men. Always. And not just men, but typically older men. Often with responsibilities, full time careers, families to take care of and stress factors deriving from changes in the outside world that they have little to no control over. At this point the obvious segue to director Clint Eastwood writes itself. So I’m gonna take the high road, ignore that low-hanging, chair-talking fruit and dive right in.
Sully is less of a tale about the Miracle on the Hudson and more about the immediate aftermath. You see the perspective of Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger (played by Tom Hanks), as he deals with the anxiety that comes with the fame of preventing what could have easily been a disaster that claimed the lives of 150 individuals, by doing his job as efficiently as possible and managing to land US Airways Flight 1549 safely in the Hudson River off the coast of Manhattan. The film does well in encapsulating what it is like to be soft-spoken and instantly famous. Suddenly, you have people wanting to sing your praise for what you still see as just doing your job. You have press appearances, you appear before interviewers, you get hounded by the paparazzi and you long to just get back home and be with your family. Sully’s only real method for coping comes from talking things out with his copilot, Jeff Skiles (Aaron Eckhart), who seems to take it more in stride as he keeps him stable and focused. There’s an obvious parallel to draw there, but it’s done pretty damn well and both actors are turning in fantastic performances. So to the untrained eye, it may even go unnoticed.
There’s also an internal investigation to determine whether or not his decision to land in the river was for the best. Thankfully, they don’t go the obvious route and make the investigation board legit villains, because their quite frankly doesn’t need to be. There were legitimate questions that needed addressing and it requires a cool head to answer. Not really an easy task, however since the good captain is obviously hit with some serious PTSD. During all of this, the perspective shifts to small flashbacks of the event and literal nightmare “what-if” scenarios sporadically. Eventually, you do see the whole event play out and it comes when Sully is able to really wrap his head around it himself and fully come to terms with it. And as anyone who remembers where they were on September 11, 2001, it’s just as panic inducing as you’d expect. You see it from the view of passengers, flight attendants, EMTs and rescue workers at any given time as the good people of New York come together and get the job done, but that still doesn’t make the prospect of a plane crash in New York in a post 9/11 world any less bone-chilling. The decision to space out the actual plane scenes in the film is probably one of the best editing decisions I’ve seen in a while. It comes natural with the obvious PTSD Captain Sully is going through and keeps the audience attention without feeling cheap.
As I’ve said before, there’s no such thing as a perfect film. Flaws in this film are relatively minuscule. It may drag a little from time to time, but never to a noticeable degree. Apart from that, the only other thing I can say is that it’s safe and digestible. But as I’ve laid out before, that’s par for the course. This is a dad movie, after all.
8/10 Check it out. And bring your dad if you can. Mine loved it.