Sully 2016 * * * 1/2 Stars

Director: Clint Eastwood
Year: 2016
Rated PG-13
Rating: * * * 1/2 Stars
Cast: Tom Hanks, Aaron Eckhart, Laura Linney

Tom Hanks and Clint Eastwood. What a winning combination. Hanks as usual, is Hanksian. Clint is of course, the Man With No Name. Together they give us the audience, a PG-13 version of 2012's Flight minus the notions of alcoholism and vapid drug use. Their film is titled Sully and excitedly, it is my latest review.

Sully starts out mid-plot, starts out as non-linear, and feels a little draggy (no pun intended). It then turns to aviation while switching into high gear. So far it is one of this year's best films, a harrowing technical achievement, a fascinating recreation of events in the weakest of our economic times.

Now unless you've been living in a cave for the last seven years, you'd know that Sully is based on a true story. Director Eastwood puts forth the behind the scenes stuff, the info you didn't get even though you might have watched all the news coverage back in January of 2009. So yeah, you probably know Sully's premise (a US Airways flight lands in the Hudson River), you probably know its outcome (155 passengers survive), and yes, you probably know the protagonist's fate (Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger is a hero, duh). It doesn't matter though. You're still riveted for much of the way.

In terms of overseeing the vision and being faithful to Sully's fact-based material, well Clint Eastwood looks more and more like an aging genius everyday. He shoots this flick with a sense of lewd craft, a sense of realism, and a numbing sense of profound proficiency. He puts you the moviegoer, right in the middle of "The Miracle on the Hudson" (and I mean literally in the middle of it). You wonder how he was able to re-imagine two plane landing sequences (from two different points of view) with such authenticity, such panache. It's powerful stuff whether you figure it out or not. Also in Sully, he effectively includes scenes of aircraft simulation that are part of Sullenberger's character's public hearing. Again he's adroit and seamlessly technological. He's that kind of filmmaker.

Add the veritable Tom Hanks as the essential everyman playing Chesley Sullenberger (Sullenberger is a more upper echelon everyman but still an everyman) and you have a total winner with Sully. Yup, I plan on seeing it again. Rating: 3 and a half stars.

Written by Jesse Burleson