Sully

(2016)

PLOT | TRIVIA | CAST | CREDITS | PURCHASE

Sully centers around U.S. Airways pilot Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger's (Tom Hanks) heroic efforts to handle an in-flight crisis that no pilot had ever before encountered. His management of this crisis made him a hero in the eyes of many and led to what is now known as the "Miracle on the Hudson."

Sully tells the story of what happened on the afternoon of January 15, 2009, when a flock of geese flew directly into the engines of U.S. Airways Flight 1549, causing both engines to fail in midair. The plane began a terrifying downward plunge that could have led to the deaths of everyone on board. With precious little time to think and scant help from air traffic control, Sully and his co-pilot Jeff Skiles (Aaron Eckhart) had to rely on their decades of experience as pilots to prevent impending disaster.

Sully, calculating that his aircraft couldn't make it to nearby airports, was now flying directly over Manhattan. He saw no viable option but to attempt to land on the Hudson River, a maneuver that no pilot had ever successfully accomplished. Much to everyone's astonishment, this split-second gamble worked. Sully successfully executed an emergency forced water landing and saved the lives of all 155 passengers on board Flight 1549. By avoiding a crash in a densely populated area, he also undoubtedly prevented a scene of horrific death and destruction on the ground. Dozens of New Yorkers, on professional rescue teams and commercial ferries, then rushed in to complete the miracle before the passengers met death in the icy waters.

After this harrowing experience, Sully was hailed as a hero by the public, but in private, he was waging a very different battle. A National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigation cast doubt on whether he had acted appropriately that day, and threatened to damage the reputation he had earned as a masterful pilot and end his distinguished career in a cloud of doubt. With only his co-pilot and his supportive wife Lorraine (Laura Linney) back home to bolster his spirits, Sully was forced into a fight that was not of his choosing, to defend the decisions he made and prove that he acted rightly on that fateful day.

• At 96 minutes, Sully is the shortest film Clint Eastwood has directed to date.
• This is the first collaboration between Clint Eastwood and Tom Hanks and the third collaboration between Clint Eastwood and Laura Linney. Linney previously appeared in both Absolute Power and Mystic River.
• This is among the first movies to be shot almost entirely with IMAX cameras. Eastwood used Arri Alexa 65 and XT IMAX cameras to shoot Sully.
• Blu Murray served as lead editor on Sully, after serving as assistant editor on a dozen previous Eastwood projects. His father is Alan Murray, who has worked with Eastwood since 1979. He served as supervising sound editor on the film. Sully marks only the second time in 40 years that a movie Eastwood directed or starred in was not edited by in-house editor Joel Cox. The last time this happened was for 1993's In the Line of Fire.
• Seeking for Sully to be as authentic as possible, Eastwood used many of the relief workers who had helped to rescue the passengers and crew of Flight 1459 as extras on Sully. He had originally planned to use an actor to portray ferry captain Vincent Lombardi, who played a key role in the rescue, but after meeting and talking with Lombardi, he decided to let him play himself.

Written by Amir Al-Kourainy

Through an affiliation with Amazon.com, this film can be purchased via ClintEastwood.net.