#365DaysOfWriting – Day 133
Sully
With J. Edgar, he tried to make it darker and murkier than the real life story, and failed.
With American Sniper, he tried to glorify an American ‘hero’ who was anything but (that may have a lot to do with his political standing and general outlook in life).
With Sully though, Clint Eastwood gets it just right. Welcome back, you old badass.
There would’ve been a temptation to tell this story Rashomon-style.
If you take the basic question into account – is Sully a hero or a madman – it would’ve been easy to try and concoct a complex, layered narrative with different POVs and leave questions open at the end as to what really happened.
Thankfully, Eastwood stays away and tells the story simply, as it is. And I’ve always believe Eastwood’s a master at playing up emotional moments in his films. He does that to perfection here – something that was sorely missing in both J. Edgar and American Sniper.
He is, of course, helped by a TITANIC (excuse the pun) performance from Tom Hanks and the cast.
He’s brought the same intensity and honesty to his performance as he did in Captain Phillips. But he’s a lot more restrained in Sully. Now while the movie may not have edge-of-the-seat drama as Captain Phillips had, it has a rawness to its emotions, a realness to its performances (led by Hanks) that elevates this simple story.
Even the support cast, especially Aaron Eckhart, gives a performance so grounded, so restrained that you feel you’re watching a documentary (excuse his odd moustache though – it doesn’t look right on him). There’s also Anna Gunn, for the Breaking Bad faithful, and she’s still playing Skyler White in some capacity – she’s got that ‘resting bitch face’. You truly want to slap her here (along with the rest of the committee who think Sully endangered the passengers).
Also, stay on for the end credits.
I won’t spoil it by telling you what I saw, but it was a beautiful touch, a lovely way to end the film. And it has stayed in my heart.
