Sully shines with Tom Hanks playing conflicted hero, lauding first responders

It’s surely not a coincidence that Warner Brothers released Sully on the same weekend as the 15th anniversary of 9/11. The parallels between a plane crashing in New York City, terrified passengers and citizenry, and the efforts of the first responders on the scene are both uncomfortable to watch and inspiring.

Director Clint Eastwood draws on those memories and emotions that are still visceral 15 years later from the very beginning of his film, during which pilot Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger (played by Tom Hanks) is having a nightmare in which he was not able to successfully land US Airways Flight 1549 on New York’s Hudson River, but ended up crashing the airliner in Manhattan, flying right into a building.

Everyone seeing Sully knows that’s not what happened, of course. Sullenberger showed remarkable calm and skill after a flock of birds flew into both engines of his Airbus A320, rendering them inoperable, and forcing him to make a quick decision when it became frighteningly apparent that turning the plane back to LaGuardia or even Teterboro Airport in New Jersey were not viable options. So was this going to be a story about Sullenberger suffering from PTSD in the hours and days after the forced water landing? (It’s emphasized several times that the accident was not a crash.) Would this be an examination of an attempt to take down someone almost universally viewed as a heroic figure?

Well, yes and yes. A movie like Sully seemingly has a difficult task, in that we all know (presumably) how the story ends. While it can be compelling to see real-life events re-enacted for drama, the promise is that we’ll see something that the news reports didn’t provide. The story can put us on the plane with the 150 passengers flying from New York City to Charlotte on Jan. 15, 2009. It can take us into the cockpit with Sullenberger and co-pilot Jeff Skiles (Aaron Eckhart).

Most importantly, we can follow Sullenberger in the aftermath of the near-catastrophe as he struggles with what nearly happened and what did happen, with self-doubt fueled by the National Transportation Safety Board’s investigation into the crash. (Forced water landing!) This is what fills most of the movie about an event which lasted 208 seconds in the air. It seems inexplicable that Sullenberger could be perceived as anything but a hero and fantastic pilot after saving 155 lives. But every story needs a villain, and Todd Komarnicki’s script (based on Sullenberger’s book) paints the NTSB investigators trying to determine the cause of the crash as the adversaries.

At one point, Sullenberger goes over the events of the flight and asserts that they did their jobs. It could certainly be argued that the NTSB investigators (played by Mike O’Malley, Anna Gunn and Jamey Sheridan) are doing their jobs as well, attempting to review every detail so that something like Flight 1549 never happened again and future pilots could learn from how the entire matter was handled. While Sullenberger’s actions were indeed heroic, any time a $100 million aircraft ends up in the Hudson River, a corporation will want to know what exactly happened.

The suspense comes from the revelation that flight data indicated that one of the engines was still functioning, contrary to Sullenberger’s assertion that he lost both engines. Under those circumstances, Sullenberger would have been able to turn the flight back and land at either LaGuardia or Teterboro. Naturally, the captain is stunned to hear this. He knows what he felt and had more than enough experience as a pilot to determine when his aircraft had failed. (A flashback shows Sullenberger experiencing a vaguely similar incident with engine failure while a jet during his military days.)

But the NTSB scrutiny intensifies after flight simulations show that the plane could have been turned back and successfully landed in Queens or New Jersey. It’s a gut punch to Sullenberger, which Hanks conveys wonderfully. Could he have been wrong? Facing retirement and a new career after piloting as a safety consultant, is it possible that he didn’t consider every viable angle or didn’t make the sharpest decision possible? Did he actually put everyone on that plane in danger with reckless behavior, even though Skiles corroborates every bit of of what happened in that cockpit?

From there, the story goes down a path which isn’t difficult to imagine that the publicly cranky Eastwood embraced. Age and experience versus data and technology. The flight computers maintain that the left engine still had thrust, even though Sullenberger felt it go. Simulations showed that a safe runway landing back at a nearby airport was possible in every single run.

But what about the human element, as we so often hear about regarding officiating in sports? Sure, it’s easy to see what call should have been made when video can zoom in and slow down the action. And it’s easy for a simulator to say what should have happened when birds hit plane engines and standard procedure is followed. How about factoring in being confronted by inexplicable circumstances that training simply doesn’t account for? How would anyone respond to such pressure, making life or death decisions for 155 people in a matter of seconds?

Could anyone other than Hanks have played Sullenberger? He’s already America’s on-screen hero, playing an actual American hero. It’s perfect casting. If he was still alive, maybe Paul Newman — who Hanks resembles with his grey hair and mustache — could have pulled it off. But Newman had a swagger that Hanks doesn’t carry himself with. He’s approachable, he’s fallible, he’s one of us. Hanks does outstanding work portraying someone being lauded from nearly every side as a hero, praised almost everywhere he goes in light of the “Miracle on the Hudson,” yet is being viewed as something else entirely by an administrative body. As a result, in addition to coping with the stress of what happened, he is racked with doubt and horror. Hanks plays all of that, as well as the responsibility he felt for the 155 people on board, wonderfully.

Where Sully also shines, a message that resonates especially around the anniversary of 9/11, is how the best of us displays itself when lives are at stake. How would you react if you were on that flight, a question Sully forces the audience to confront by putting us in that plane. Would you help the older passengers or someone who couldn’t swim? What about family members who have been separated and have no idea if their loved ones are safe?

We roll our eyes when flight attendants go over safety procedures and pilots review every single necessary check before takeoff. But the intention is to serve and protect. That certainly applies to the Coast Guard personnel that responded when Flight 1549 was floating on the Hudson and 155 people were on the verge of sinking in freezing waters during frigid January weather. When necessary, people can do extraordinary things for each other, something that everyone probably needs to be reminded of on occasion.