Tom Hanks, Hollywood’s favourite uncle, could not have been better cast for the role of Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger, the real-life pilot who made the call to crash-land a plane on the Hudson River with 155 lives on-board. He’s a straightforward and likeable man – the type that Uncle Hanks plays best – confronted with a horrifying life-or-death scenario that demands extraordinary things from ordinary people. It may come as a surprise, then, that Clint Eastwood’s film starts immediately after everyone is saved.
Faced with news reporters hailing him as a hero and crash investigators that suspect he’s anything but, Sully’s actions are questioned. Did he make the right call or did he needlessly put all those passengers at risk? It’s a lot to put on a guy who’s decompressing from a traumatic experience, especially when the apathetic investigative board grills him by comparing his perilous performance to a computer simulation. By refusing to show the actual crash until it’s necessary, Sully’s uncertainty becomes the audience’s – and it’s intense.
It’s a fantastic narrative manoeuvre that uses flashbacks with stern purpose. The flight is seen more than once, but each time changes the perspective slightly to aid the current legal situation. Even more impressive is how the sequence still manages to be gut-crunchingly intense despite knowing that everyone makes it out alive.
But the soul of the film resides in Hanks’ flawlessly tuned performance. At one moment, Sully is completely confident in his decision. At another, he’s mortified at the thought of getting it wrong. His psychological swaying is hardly ever put into words, but Hanks says more with a hasty voice and a gloomy glare than lines of dialogue can. When everything comes into focus, the conclusion rests its case with a calm clarity and humane conviction that is superbly satisfying to behold.
