Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		5.0
Audio		5.0
Extras		3.0
Overall		4.5

Sully Blu-ray Movie Review

"Everything is unprecedented until it happens for the first time."

Reviewed by Michael Reuben December 21, 2016

On January 15, 2009, a US Airways flight collided with a flock of Canadian geese shortly after takeoff from New York's LaGuardia Airport. Both engines were destroyed, and the plane's veteran pilot, Capt. Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger, rapidly assessed that he lacked sufficient altitude and speed to reach any of the nearby airports. With no other option, Sullenberger glided the massive Airbus A320 onto the surface of the Hudson River, the first-ever successful water landing of a jet airliner. All 155 passengers and crew survived, with only minor injuries. Sullenberger was promptly hailed as a hero, and the press dubbed his accomplishment "the Miracle on the Hudson".

Sully is billed as the "untold" story of what happened after that miracle, as investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board (or "NTSB") second-guessed the actions of Sullenberger and his co-pilot, First Officer Jeff Skiles, and computer simulations indicated that the damaged plane could have returned safely to LaGuardia. While Sully was being lionized by the press and public, the regulatory investigations threatened to end his thirty-year career as a commercial aviator.

Clint Eastwood's account of these events uses the NTSB investigation as a narrative frame, but the film's real subject is the ambiguity of heroism. As the script by Todd Komarnicki (Perfect Stranger) repeatedly emphasizes, Sully's remarkable feat occurred at a moment when the country needed a hero as an antidote to war, recession and a future that looked increasingly dark and uncertain. But the man who finds himself abruptly thrust into this role keeps insisting that he's not a hero; he was simply doing his job. Like Chris Kyle in Eastwood's American Sniper, Sully must cope with private trauma while simultaneously bearing the burden of becoming a legend.

Sully opens shortly after January 15, 2009, on the first day of the NTSB's informal hearings, and culminates in the agency's final hearing before an audience of professionals. (The script is deliberately vague about the time line, compacting events that extended over many months into a matter of days.) Throughout the proceedings, the lead NTSB investigators (Mike O'Malley, Jamey Sheridan and Breaking Bad 's Anna Gunn) repeatedly probe and question the decisions made in the cockpit of Flight 1549 in the 208 seconds between the bird strike and the water landing. While Sully (Tom Hanks) and Skiles (Aaron Eckhart) doggedly push back, in private Sully begins to question both his memory and his judgment. He suffers from insomnia, nightmares and waking fantasies of disaster and disgrace. His disqualification from flying while the investigation is pending threatens the Sullenberger family with economic ruin, a point on which Sully vainly attempts to reassure his wife, Lorrie (Laura Linney). In a device that emphasizes the beleaguered pilot's isolation, Eastwood never shows the couple together onscreen; all of their interactions occur over the telephone.

Sully's private suffering makes the public adulation all the more surreal. Reporters mob his home and follow his every move. He and his crew appear on TV with David Letterman, and Sully himself is interviewed by Katie Couric (playing herself). Complete strangers hug him, offer him drinks and convey proposals of marriage. But, like so many people unexpectedly thrust into the public spotlight, Sully remains uncomfortable with the attention. He just wants his old life back.

Eastwood intercuts the investigation with flashbacks to the events of January 15, 2009, which the director reenacts with exceptional realism—from the routine minutia of boarding and seating passengers, through the uneventful takeoff, to the suddenness of the collision and the tense professionalism of Sully and Skiles as they shift into crisis mode. The film also depicts the extraordinary rescue effort by a coalition of ferryboat crews, NYPD and other first responders, who spontaneously rallied to pull passengers and crew from the wreckage and the Hudson's freezing waters. But the rescue is seen only once, while the crash—or, as Sully insists on calling it, the "forced landing"—replays multiple times, like some post-traumatic nightmare from which the film cannot awake until the very end, when Sully is finally exonerated. Underscoring the event's nightmarish character, Eastwood includes strategic shots of panicked New Yorkers looking out their windows at yet another commercial airliner descending ominously toward the skyline. As one of Sully's colleagues aptly observes after the rescue: "It's been a while since New York had news this good. Especially with an airplane in it."

Hanks gives a supremely skillful performance, the kind that is routinely overlooked during award season in favor of florid histrionics. But he's playing a man who embodies plain-spoken modesty and calm self-possession, and Hanks conveys these qualities with the subtlety of which only an actor of exceptional talent and experience is capable. Even when Sully is wading through the plane's rapidly flooding passenger compartment, delaying his own evacuation while he checks for stragglers, Hanks underplays the moment. Only afterwards, alone or speaking with Lorrie, does he betray any hint of inner turmoil. His most overtly emotional display occurs when Sully is informed, hours after the emergency landing, that all 155 occupants of the plane have been accounted for, and his face dissolves in a wave of relief.

Sully has some notable flaws. It exaggerates the antagonism of the NTSB investigators to the point of villainy, necessitating an abrupt and less-than-credible about-face when all the evidence is in. (Anna Gunn carries the burden of being the investigation's conscience, an unenviable task that she handles as well as anyone could.) The film also ends too abruptly, substituting photos of the real-life rescue and reunion video excerpts for a proper denouement. But despite these missteps, Sully remains a moving and memorable experience, because it effectively conveys how an ordinary day was suddenly transformed into a terrifying ordeal that, for some, continued long after the events making headlines.

Sully Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Sully was shot by Tom Stern, Eastwood's regular cinematographer since Blood Work, on the Arri Alexa 65, which Arri is calling an IMAX camera. Post-production was completed on a digital intermediate at 4K, which no doubt accounts for the stunning clarity on Warner's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray. The detail on closeups of faces is almost painfully real, and the minutia of the cockpit controls are plainly visible. The exceptional resolution gives the CG-enhanced re-creation of the wounded aircraft's descent and landing a sense of hyper-realism, which continues as the passengers flee the sinking plane onto the wings to await rescue.

Although a number of scenes are set at night, much of Sully plays out in bright daylight under a steel-gray winter sky or in well-lit neutral interiors such as airport corridors, hotel suites and conference rooms. The cool palette and clean, almost sterile production design provide a counterpoint to the chaotic events of Flight 1549, as well as to the scrum of reporters who routinely besiege Sully and his family. In the extended public hearing sequence, the numerous attendees are readily visible and easily distinguishable from one another in the crowd. Several brief flashbacks to Sully's initial training on a crop dusting plane and his experience as an Air Force fighter pilot are given a warm and nostalgic glow, in contrast to the chill of the present-day sequences. I saw Sully theatrically, and the Blu-ray presentation retains all of the visual impact of the theatrical presentation.

Warner's theatrical group has fallen back into bad old habits of wasting much of the available space on a Blu-ray disc (here, about 10 GB), while holding the average bitrate in the mid-twenties (specifically, 24.57 Mbps). Nevertheless, the encode is capable, and the image is unmarred by artifacts or distortion.

Sully Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

As with the photography, realism is the hallmark of Sully's Dolby Atmos soundtrack. Even before anything has appeared beyond the abbreviated opening titles, the viewing room has come alive with the sounds of Flight 1549 taking off, followed by the engines failing and the rotors clattering to a stop (the latter will be repeated several times during the course of the film). All of the scenes from January 15, 2009, play out in a meticulously sculpted sonic landscape replicating the realistic environments from the boarding jetway at LaGuardia to the plane's passenger cabin, cockpit and exterior—and the sounds shift positions with precision as the camera's perspective changes. Anyone who has ever flown a commercial flight will recognize the accuracy of the sound design up to the moment of the bird strike. The remainder of the experience is composed of sounds that most of us have never heard (and hope never to hear), but the impression of realism persists, with the engines sputtering to a stop, the plane hitting the water and the fusilage straining and groaning as the aircraft floods and sinks.

The soundtrack thoroughly exploits Dolby Atmos' ability to position specific sounds at precise points within the listening environment, whether it's the slam of overhead storage bin doors being closed, the waters of the Hudson cascading over the nose of the plane as it hits the river's surface or the accusations of the NTSB investigators echoing in Sully's memory while he jogs. Helicopters, ferry boats and emergency vehicles are all convincingly rendered. Quieter scenes such as the NTSB proceedings and private conversations between Sully and Lorrie are accompanied by subtle environmental cues.

The track's dynamic range is broad, and the bass extension is especially powerful during the plane's taxi and takeoff, when the engines are performing normally. Dialogue is clearly rendered, although it is sometimes submerged in the cacophony of mechanized harmoics (which, I suspect, is a deliberate choice by the sound designers). The sparely used score is by Christian Jacob and the Tierney Sutton Band, with a main theme composed by Eastwood.

Sully Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Moment by Moment: Averting Disaster on the Hudson (1080p; 1.78:1; 15:44): This is a detailed account of Flight 1549 by three people who lived it: Capt. "Sully" Sullenberger, First Officer Jeff Skiles and air controller Patrick Harten (played in the film by Patch Darragh), all of whom supply additional detail not included in Sully.



• Sully Sullenberger: The Man Behind the Miracle (1080p; 1.78:1; 19:49): This biography of Sullenberger is narrated by Philip Terence and includes contributions from the captain himself, as well as wife Lorrie, daughter Kelly and Jeff Skiles.



• Neck Deep in the Hudson: Shooting Sully (1080p; 1.78:1; 20:17): This behind-the-scenes feature is longer and more informative than the usual EPK. The principal cast are interviewed, along with Eastwood; producers Frank Marshall, Allyn Stewart and Kipp Nelson; screenwriter Todd Komarnicki; and, of course, Sully himself. Production footage appears from multiple locations, including the green-screened soundstage where the cockpit scenes were filmed and Falls Lake at Universal Studios, which doubled for the Hudson. Hanks and Eckhart describe their training in a flight simulator.



• Trailers: The film's trailer is not included. At startup the disc plays trailers for Collateral Beauty, Live by Night, The Accountant and Suicide Squad, plus the familiar Warner promo for digital copies.

Sully Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Among other things, Sully is a reminder that expertise really does count, especially in a crisis. Sully's ability to successfully achieve a landing previously thought to be impossible depended on his intimate knowledge of the A320, his Air Force training, his work as a crash investigator and forty years of piloting craft of numerous sorts. Faced with a scenario for which there was no precedent or established procedure, he relied on everything he knew to improvise a solution that averted what could easily have been one of the worst disasters in aviation history. Eastwood has captured both the uniqueness of Sully's accomplishment and the toll that it took on him personally. Warner's Blu-ray presentation is first-rate and highly recommended.