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Thoughts on the Movie “Sully” UPDATE: January 1. THEY MADE ME do it. Everybody from the journalist Peter Greenberg to my sister’s husband implored me to finally go and watch “Sully,” the Clint Eastwood- directed movie starring Tom Hanks as U.

S. Airways captain Chesley Sullenberger, guardian angel of flight 1. Airbus that splashed into the Hudson River eight years ago. When the movie was first released, back in September, I refused to see it (see the original post, below). I’d watched too many big- screen butcher jobs — the chokingly awful “Flight,” for example, with Denzel Washington — and didn’t need the aggravation. But then the testimonials started coming in, boasting of the film’s surprising levels of accuracy and authenticity. This, I was told again and again, is the rare Hollywood movie that gets the pilot stuff right. Dahmer Movie Watch Online.

Why do I listen to these people? The screening took place at my friend Todd’s home theater in Deerfield, Illinois.

Todd, like me, is an airline pilot who flies 7. Todd was a good viewing partner because, like me, he was skeptical from the start, but also because he’s less of a crank and was bound to keep me in check when my complaints got too whiny or pedantic. Except, in the end, neither of us much liked the movie. Cue 9. 6 minutes of commiserative eye- rolling and sporadic laughter. If there’s a saving grace, it’s that the cockpit scenes are brief. So far as that “pilot stuff” goes, there’s just not enough of it, really, to get wrong.

The silliest scene, to me, is the reenactment of the takeoff sequence, where we see Sully and his first officer, Jeff Skiles (played by Aaron Eckhart, whose bushy ‘stache, I have to say, is groovily pilot- like), gazing out the window as their jet climbs away. The cockpit is eerily silent, as if the engines have somehow already quit, and the two men chat lazily about the beauty of the Gotham skyline in winter. Realism grade: F- minus. The first few minutes after takeoff are about the busiest portion of any flight. There’s a lot going on, from the flap retraction sequence to various turns and climb segments.

And there’s a ton of radio chatter. It’s a very noisy, task- intensive several minutes, especially out of an airport like La. Guardia. Then come the geese. And there go the engines.

Skiles, who was at the controls, gives the jet over to Sully, who gets the heroics going. Skiles then consults the QRH and begins an oddly stilted reading of the emergency checklist (a little too emotionless and flat, though apparently true to the CVR, wordage- wise). And, a couple of minutes later, we get the splashdown into the icy river, digitally rendered in a manner that strikes me as probably more violent and forceful than it was in real life. Later — indeed for most of the movie — the bad- guy investigators are on Sully’s ass about his decision to ditch in the water rather than attempt a return to LGA.

As part of their complaint, they make the point, several times, that one of the plane’s engines hadn’t totally failed, but had remained at idle thrust. The implication here is that an idling engine would’ve helped get them back to the airport. This made no sense either to me or to Todd, as idle thrust is just that: idle. It produces little or no push, and wouldn’t have been useful.

What were they saying here, that the pilots could have pushed up the throttle and found more power? It’s not clear. (In any case, it wasn’t true. As Sully contested, the engine had been wrecked, though investigators, and in turn viewers, don’t learn this until the very end.)The whole return- to- La Guardia question has irked me from the start. Simulator experiments show that flight 1.

But this assumed ideal conditions and instantaneous decision- making, including a well- rehearsed crew that knew exactly what was about to happen. The real- world scenario was a lot messier, as these things always are. Sullenberger weighed the options. Sure, they might have made it back. But if he was wrong — even a small wind shift could throw off the glide — the result would be an Airbus A3. New York City. Landing in the water was hardly ideal, but it was the best and safest choice.

I was also introduced a magical new term that in all my years of flying I’d never heard before: “sub- idle.” The engine was at “sub- idle.” Presumably this is something even less useful than idle? So why are we hearing about it?“What the heck is ‘sub- idle’?” I said to Todd.“Is Tom Hanks’ hair really that gray,” answered Todd.

Or did they just color it that way?”“Why is there so much trouble in the world?” I said, quoting my favorite line from “Blue Velvet.” We were getting punchy. It was all a little much. Of course, “Sully” isn’t a movie about flying.

The cockpit sequences are almost incidental. It’s about Sullenberger the man, and his weathering of the investigation that followed. On this count, however, the movie fails harder. Eastwood gives us Sully as a kind of everyman American hero, in battle with obstructive bureaucrats trying to railroad him. But according to those who were there, that’s simply not how things played out.

The portrayal of the NTSB investigators in the new ‘Sully’ movie as prosecutors is not only wildly inaccurate but grossly unfair,” said Mark Dombroff, an aviation lawyer who represented U. S. Airways during the investigation. Folks at the NTSB, which is about the most highly respected government agency that exists, have been no less critical. I received an email from Robert Benzon, Investigator- In- Charge of the board’s inquiry into the flight 1.

This movie will hinder the success of future NTSB investigations,” wrote Benzon, “because of its incredibly inaccurate depiction of how such investigations are conducted. The NTSB needs the cooperation of all investigation participants: aircraft and engine manufactures, airline operators, the FAA, employee unions, and very importantly flight crewmembers. Sully’ was a step backward.” Ouch. Watching the movie, this resentment is easy to understand. The investigators are shown as caricatured villains, hostile to a point that simply isn’t believable. And the ridiculous, time- compressed version of the review board’s final hearing, in the film’s closing minutes, during which Sully is vindicated and everybody goes home happy, is nothing if not goofy — a contrived, Disneyfied portrayal that mocks the actual investigators’ hard work and dedication. When Todd flicked off the screen, we turned and smirked at each other.

We were, suffice it to say, underwhelmed. ORIGINAL POST: September 7, 2. I REALLY LIKED Tom Hanks in the Paul Greengrass movie, “Captain Phillips.”There, that’s my review of the new film “Sully,” which opens this week, featuring Hanks as captain Chesley Sullenberger. He of “Miracle on the Hudson” fame, whose 2. Watch Shotgun Stories HDQ. In other words, I’m not reviewing the movie. I can’t review it, because, in the interest of self- preservation, I’m afraid to see it.

It was all I could do to muster up the courage to take in the trailer. Which, in all honestly, had me wanting to see more. Once you get past the histrionics at the beginning — “No one warned us. No one said, you are going to lose both engines at a lower altitude than any jet in history.” — it’s a compelling little tease. But thirty carefully culled seconds can be deceptive. I’ve been burned this way before. All I could do was shake my head.

Not bad,” I said to myself. But do I have the stomach, or enough medication, to get through two full hours of this?“Call me a coward, and maybe — hopefully? I’ve got it all wrong.

Remember, though, I have decades of precedent on my side. When Hollywood does airplanes, the results are always a mess, ranging from borderline realistic to off- the- wall preposterous. There have been almost no exceptions to this — save, perhaps, for the efforts of the aforementioned Paul Greengrass, whose “United 9. Problem is, Greengrass isn’t directing “Sully,” Clint Eastwood is, and I have a bad feeling about this one. A few years back, I had a similar reaction after the movie “Flight” came out.