★★★★ 
 
 Warner Bros. Pictures presents a film directed by Clint Eastwood and written by Todd Komarnicki, based on the book “Highest Duty” by Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger. Just a few minutes after takeoff, the plane was struck by a flock of Canadian geese, rendering both engines powerless and necessitating a return to LaGuardia Airport — but when it was determined there wasn’t enough time to reach LaGuardia or any other nearby runway, the plane made an emergency crash landing on the water, and miraculously, all 155 passengers and crew survived. What’s more, he’s not the only one with doubts: The film’s framing device is an investigation held by the National Transportation Safety Board, whose extensive simulations and computer algorithms suggested that Sullenberger probably had the engine power and time to make a safe landing back at LaGuardia, or in New Jersey. For audiences whose image of Sullenberger is the paragon of modesty and skill, aw-shucks-ing it through interviews with Katie Couric and David Letterman, this part of his story will come as a revelation, and an infuriating one at that: It seems impossible that anyone could second-guess a pilot whose 40-year career was so exemplary that he was known in the field as a safety expert. Beautifully filmed in and around a wintry Manhattan, and featuring spectacular sequences re-creating that iconic landing and rescue on Jan. 15, “Sully” is also suffused with a particularly mournful sense of poignancy; the sight of a plane coming so perilously close to the buildings along the Upper West Side can’t help but conjure the city’s most grievous day eight years earlier, an observation made late in the film by one of Sully’s colleagues. To paraphrase the title character, it’s just a movie doing its job.
– Sure, there was plenty of "hero sex," but the aftermath of the Miracle on the Hudson wasn't all sunshine and rainbows. It's that story Clint Eastwood has chosen to tell in Sully, starring Tom Hanks as pilot Chesley Sullenberger. Here's what critics are saying: Richard Roeper at the Chicago Sun-Times calls it "an absolute triumph." It's "an electrifying thriller, a wonderful in-depth character study and a fascinating airline safety procedural." Hanks, meanwhile, "is so good he could play this character in a one-man show with nothing but a chair and a telephone onstage and it would be riveting." "That it unnerves you as much as it does may seem surprising, given that going in, we know how this story ends." But Eastwood is "very good at his job, a talent that gives the movie its tension along with an autobiographical sheen," writes Manohla Dargis at the New York Times. In particular, he offers "a master class in direction" during the accident scene, while Hanks makes a perfect Sully. Stephen Whitty at NJ.com says the accident scene is "the best part of the film," but he's not so enthralled with the rest of it. Basically, he concludes "there's not enough story" to warrant a feature-length film. Flashbacks to Sully's youth "add nothing but time," while the National Transportation Board Safety Board investigation delivers no drama or suspense, he adds. Ann Hornaday doesn't agree. Sully is "a four-square, upstanding, rock-solid example of filmmaking at its most direct and honestly affecting," and is "thoroughly engrossing and exciting to watch," she writes at the Washington Post. "To paraphrase the title character, it's just a movie doing its job. And amen to that."