How thoughtful of the Hollywood 20 to simulate the arctic air atop the January Hudson River….NOT.:) Hey, I’m grateful, I got to go outside to get warm afterward, which is still pretty novel for a New York transplant.
“Sully”, directed by Clint Eastwood, was excellent. Not tremendous, in spite of Tom Hanks, who is undeniably our generation’s Jimmy Stewart, maybe even bigger (light bulb idea=future comparison blog).
Why wasn’t ‘Sully’ a 10? One bias of mine is Laura Linney. I love this woman and seeing her reduced to a fretting wife made me feel sad. Please some one, give this woman a script! In the meantime, rent “Savages” which is tremendous.
And the ‘meanwhile back at the ranch’ scenes’, while necessary, weren’t enough, just as a telephone or long distance relationship doesn’t give the emotional sustenance of face to face, body to body, skin to skin…you get my touch? No, because I’m not delivering this as a live speech. How to translate his financial concerns to screen is problematic, unless you do back story scenes which may have been better? Tough call, I realize.
Another difficulty: Sully’s inner turmoil, his guilt, the ‘did I do the right thing?” I have those questions just rising out of bed in the morning, so I empathize, but similar to me again, this is all internal. Akin to that title “The Loneliness of a Long Distance Runner”. Or as they probably said in the sixties, ‘it’s in my head, man’. So, the Hanks jogging and the Hanks agonizing again is tough, because his inner conflict is problematic to translate visually.
Also challenging were the scenes that didn’t connect up: Sully’s old flying days both on the farm and in the military, Sully’s imagining planes crashing into buildings, no explanations…., Benson’s commentary, ‘clunky scenes’ mentioned on his podcast Doug Loves Movies.
Why it’s worth the price of admission: a. Hanks (aforementioned), b. the great range and realistic emotions displayed by the excellent passenger actors, so well written and executed, c. the investigation, both in writing and acting, also seemed real in the bureaucratic bologna sort of way, d. the awkward, but again, realistic moments with complete strangers who suddenly felt the faux media intimacy television creates, e. the suspense of the cockpit, again A+.
A fact check I want to research is, did they really play the cockpit recording live to the two men who experienced it in front of a large audience of airline execs?
Sully, while imperfect, is well worth a view.
