Sully (2016)

User Review

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  TheMovieDiorama

  7 / 10

  Another biographical disaster movie, Sully is about Captain Chesley Sullenberger and the landing on the Hudson river in January 2009 and the media frenzy and investigation that followed those events. I remember this news story when I was in school, I did not read too much into it (was probably a bit too young at the time to fully understand it). Originally I thought they would struggle to make the film enthralling enough, but with Clint Eastwood directing it was bound to be good. Firstly Tom Hanks yet again shines, it's safe to say that he is one of the ultimate Hollywood bankable stars. It was quite an understated performance as Sully himself is rather reserved and hides his emotions, I thought Hanks did well. It's good to see Aaron Eckhart as one of the main roles, I find him to be rather underrated and so was pleasantly surprised to find out he was in this. Acting aside, the main star as with all of his films is Clint Eastwood. His directing style is very simple yet effective, nothing fancy just clean realistic camera work. You can tell that the actors in his films appreciate him as a director and work well with him. The scenes of the plane landing in the Hudson river were excellently shot and yet somehow, even though we know what happens, it is still mesmerising and tense to watch. I like how the story played out with the fact that Sully could have landed at an airport and actually the more intense scenes are when the flight simulators are playing...it did raise the question: could Sully have prevented an emergency landing on the Hudson? This brings me to the negatives of the film, and that is the runtime is ridiculously short. 88 minutes for a biographical film!? Nonsense! If you can't make a biopic more than 2 hours long then you do not have enough source material. I appreciate that the film was not longed out for the sake of it, but it was far too short for us to be invested in the characters completely and that is a massive shame. There were scenes regarding Sully's past, but even them did not add anything to the story or any emotional impact. An extra 10 minutes on the investigation or maybe the survivors could have made the film more investing. Overall, Sully was an interesting biographical film about a recent news story with great performances and direction, but the extremely short runtime hinders the character and story investment.

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