'Review of the Movie "Sully'
The movie depicting the US Airways Flight 1549 accident, Sully: Hudson Miracle, was officially released in Japan yesterday. As an aviation enthusiast, of course, I went to see the IMAX version on the opening day and have simply written down my thoughts here.
Everyone is familiar with the story of Flight 1549, and the plot isn’t complicated, so I won’t go into details here. The two blog posts below offer good explanations, so you can refer to them. Information on Sully (Sully: Hudson Miracle) First Impressions of Sully
Personally, I think the most outstanding aspect of this film is its rigor and sense of realism. For example, it doesn’t portray the captain as a superhuman hero, but rather describes his troubles as a mortal; As the captain said himself, the Miracle on the Hudson is a paradigm of successful cooperation by hundreds of people at the scene, The movie highlights this point very prominently; But most importantly, regarding the flight itself, including the airframe, the ATC dialogue, the cockpit, and the actions of the crew and passengers, These details are perfect, with basically no exaggerated CG visuals.
According to this Japanese interview article with the director- We bought one airliner! Clint Eastwood’s extraordinarily realistic production, It turns out they bought an A320 to shoot this film. No wonder the equipment inside the aircraft was so authentic. Director Eastwood served in the military back in the day, and at age 21 he experienced a water landing on a military aircraft. He still remembers the sensation of the aircraft hitting the water at high speed and swimming to escape in the sea. I believe it is precisely because of these factors that this film was produced so exquisitely.
By the way, aviation themes in current TV and movies are full of shoddy works, For example, the same aircraft shows a single-aisle narrow-body in the cabin one moment, and then turns into a twin-aisle wide-body the next; Or it’s obviously a prop airliner from decades ago, but the cockpit uses modern glass instruments; The cabin equipment looks obviously like hand-made props in a movie studio; Clumsy control wheel or joystick manipulation, like driving bumper cars in a park; Excessive airframe shaking, excessive passenger expressions, etc., always make one feel disgusted.
Fortunately, there are no such boring scenes in this film. Maybe for audiences used to the aviation disaster films mentioned above, it’s not too exciting, But for me, it was extremely enjoyable to watch.
Two points of nitpicking, though neither is strong. One is that the depiction of the NTSB is slightly stiff and stereotypical. Perhaps for the plot, some antagonists are needed, But they shouldn’t be portrayed too excessively; The other is that the sound of the APU starting shouldn’t be that loud, right? Maybe the IMAX sound effects were too good, But I don’t think it would be that loud in reality.
Tom Hanks is an actor I like, and I seem to have seen all his movies in recent years.
In Forrest Gump, the end point of Gump’s run across the US is the Santa Monica Pier.
Coincidentally, I went there last month, a photo taken in front of Bubba Gump Shrimp.
The A320 is a type I like, and I have practiced on a fixed-base simulator,
Although I have experience operating on a full-motion A320 simulator (the same CAE product that appears in the movie), I won’t share it publicly for privacy reasons.
The first officer’s line at the end, “If you have to do it again, I would’ve done it in July,” was truly humorous. Kudos.
Other materials, including the NTSB investigation report, and flight data from the final ditching, etc. http://www.exosphere3d.com/pubwww/pages/project_gallery/cactus_1549_hudson_river.html
Aircraft Performance Group Chairman’s Aircraft Performance Study by John O’Callaghan
USAirways 1549 (AWE1549), January 15, 2009 FAA Air Traffic Control communications
