Film – Sully: Miracle on the Hudson
I was there.As I tell everyone who mentions this remarkable incident, I was just a couple of streets away in New York where Captain Sullenberger landed the US Airways Flight on the Hudson River. I tell them I took one look outside my apartment on this coldest of January days and decided not to walk the 5-7 minutes to the end of West 93rd to see commotion on the river.I also tell them, if I knew that seven years later the story would become a film starring Tom Hanks, I would have tolerated the cold.Today, we are much more accustomed to true stories becoming the basis of films. In 2016 alone, I predict there’ll be TV dramas and film of the Trump presidency, the UK’s exit from the EU, the war in Syria, the resulting refugee crisis and possibly even ones about the passing of David Bowie and Sir Terry Wogan in particular amongst all the iconic figures that have checked out this year.Back in 2009, America’s first black president was about to be sworn in and this hero story of the Captain who had the foresight to safely emergency land a plane with 155 passengers just fitted right in to the fairy-tale.Having learnt from Mathew Syed’s book about the blame culture that exists (existed? in the airline industry, where by pilots can get sued after an incident – even one where every life is saved – the scenes where the industry try to hang this on the Sully and his co-pilot seem believable. To the world, certainly to me at the time, he is a hero but the industry cannot fathom that both engines can fail after a seagull incident.This is a human interest story, one where the pilot has to have the strength to protect himself, knowing he did the very best he could.I haven’t read Captain Sullenberger’s book as yet. Similarly, I haven’t read the book the much more harrowing Captain Philips was based on, also turned into a heroic Hanks film. I’m sure it will have had some Hollywood dust sprinkled over it. 8/10