Sully Directed by Clint Eastwood

Sully

Directed by Clint Eastwood

Starring: Tom Hanks, Ashley Austin Morris, Adam Boyer, Wilbur Fitzgerald, Michael Rapaport, Chris Bauer, Aaron Eckhart, Brett Rice, Christopher Curry, Sam Huntington, Max Adler, Patch Darragh, Mike O'Malley, Anna Gunn, Jamey Sheridan, Laura Linney

Country: USA

Year: 2016

Review by Roberto Matteucci

“You know, it's been a while since New York had news this good. Especially with an airplane in it.”

In August 2016, Michael Hainey, Executive Director of Editorial Esquire Magazine, realizes a double interview with Clint Eastwood and his son Scott.

The occasion was the presence at the same time in cinemas of Sully directed by Eastwood father and Snowden starring Scott Eastwood.

During the interview Eastwood's father, with the same determination of Dirty Harry says:

“But he's onto something, because secretly everybody's getting tired of political correctness, kissing up. That's the kiss-ass generation we're in right now. We're really in a pussy generation. Everybody's walking on eggshells. We see people accusing people of being racist and all kinds of stuff. When I grew up, those things weren't called racist. And then when I did Gran Torino, even my associate said, "This is a really good script, but it's politically incorrect." And I said, "Good. Let me read it tonight." The next morning, I came in and I threw it on his desk and I said, "We're starting this immediately."” [1]

Chesley 'Sully' Sullenberger is not a member of the “pussy generation”.

Sully assumed his responsibilities.

On 15 January 2009, Sully was the commander in flight 1549 from New York airport, La Guardia, bound for Charlotte in Nord Carolina. A short flight, about an hour and a quarter. Inside the airplane, there were the pilot - Sully - the vice pilot, three assistants and one hundred and fifty passengers.

Until a few days before in New York had snowed, but that day the weather was good. The flight had just risen when a flock of birds hit the aircraft. The two engines suffered a contemporary block. Without motors, the control tower ordered him to return to one of two nearby airports. Sully immediately discards the proposal; too distant for aircraft autonomy. Sully alone, in some seconds, saw beneath him a great track, a water track, the Hudson River. He took the decision, he want to land on the river.

Ditching was perfect, the fuselage did not undergo breakage, passengers come out neatly and position themselves on the slides or waiting on the wings. Sully, as a good captain, was the last to leave the plane, he wanted to be sure that all people have left.

People immediately recognizes the value of the gesture and raises Sully as a hero.

Clint Eastwood creates a series of characters, especially among passengers.

However, his favorite character is Sully, starring Tom Hanks.

In the first scene, Sully had a nightmare, he drives a plane, which slams against the New York houses; it is the interpretation of the trauma of all Americans: the attack on 9 September.

The background of Sully is still more far away: the love of flying, the first flight, and war.

The popularity of Sully is high both among ordinary people, as in a pub, and in the big talk shows like Late Show with David Letterman.

The accident scene has a perfect reconstruction, short and intense. The blow with the birds, the discussion with the control tower, the decision and ditching. In two hundred and eight seconds the commander decided the best solution. However, for someone is not a hero. Sully has an enemy: the National Transportation Safety Board, a federal agency responsible for civil transportation accident investigation, we can briefly read in bureaucracy.

For the agency, the Sully behavior was incorrect.

Why? He had saved all, what did he do wrong?

The reason is incredible, he did not follow the instructions of the control tower, he refused to land in an airport, but it took a decision on his own.

NTSF reads in the behavior of Sully as a menace of their existence, their chair, their interests, so the existence of the state itself; the state as a conglomerate of offices, bureaucratic, authoritarian controls, paper sheets, manuals of behavior.

The agency used computer to demonstrate the faults of Sully. A simulated flight seems to show that the plane had enough time to reach the airport. The computer has become infallible. For the agency, the computer is impeccable while the human decision, the experience are wrongs. The message is clear: the National Transportation Safety Board belongs to the pussy generation. They consider themselves superior. Eastwood has fun with the members of the agency; shoot them into strange position, while the faces are full of grimaces. At the beginning, they reveal superiority, but when their argument vanishes, the director shows them like sad and gloom persons.

The film revolves around the river. The Hudson is quiet, peaceful. We look at the beginning while Sully runs next to the river. It is the location of the incident, but it is not just a spectator, the river helps people to save. Sure, it is cold, who jumped into the water has not made a good choice, but the river has a physical connection to Sully.

The final sequences of the film divided moods. On one hand the pussy generation: the bureaucracy, the politically correct, the snobs, the radical chic. In the other side, there is normal people, people who every day go to work. They are honest.

Sully is a normal person, he has no vanity, and he does not aspire to sanctification. Eastwood shows when he is talking on the phone with his wife about everyday problems, and scared for the future.

The director creates tension on the agency's behavior, up to transform it in disgust, in anger. Indeed, it seems that the author thought to change history.

Eastwood builds another hero, an ordinary hero, a hero because he worked honestly. Sully enters in the Eastwood pantheon of brave people. A real man, flesh and blood. In the end, the director inserts the image of the true Sully while meeting the passengers. The same final in American Sniper with the Chris Kyle funeral.

Eastwood is smart at modeling the role of Tom Hanks.

Hanks looks like Eastwood but without his cynicism.

Cynicism and politically incorrect. Clint Eastwood is now a living legend.

[1] http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/a46893/double-trouble-clint-and-scott-eastwood/