I'm almost age 70, I watched this movie with intense interest. I won't ruin it for you by citing examples and opinions of the various scenes - awesome as they are.

Anyone who has ever worn a seat belt in the back of the high-speed aluminum tube, entrusting their entire lives to the professionalism of other people will watch this movie differently than someone who has not flown. But, everyone will find it realistic and without the Hollywood BS often seen in airline movies like the movie "Flight" and "Snakes on A Plane". Jeeze.

So Fly safe and when you get to see this movie, enjoy the accurate account of Captain "Sully" and his crew. And, further down the road, when you hear some fool saying that "modern jets virtually fly themselves", I bet that you will have something to say about that.

Just for fun, I attached a cockpit photo. Boeing 767. Ironically, this flight is the exact same one taken by the "underwear bomber" (on a different day) Flight 68/69 as I recall. The First Officer on this trip here is my son. I flew over to Paris, and he flew it back after our 30-hour layover He flew for years and years and for Executive Jets as a captain before being hired by American. We had over 200 people onboard and this photo was taken about half way across the Atlantic on our return trip Paris to Miami. You, the people whose lives matter more than our own, are always in our thoughts. Every bump, every jolt, every turn. We feel what you feel and we just want to get you home safely. Now retired, I have done that for almost 40 years. So, when I see a movie like this one about Captain "Sully", I think through some of those "special" times when things didn't go as planned.

Absolutely fantastic!
I really had no desire to watch Sully when I saw the previews. I tend to stay away from movies depicting real events.
But I am SO glad on a quiet Christmas night I decided to rent it on Amazon.
Tom Hanks, as usual, delivers a nuanced, convincing performance of a man grappling with his ability and mortality; did he do the right thing?? He should have been dead but instead is blinded, literally, by the glare of cameras. No time to process, or for it to all sink in. And to undergo an interrogation on top of it?!?! Wow!
And being inside the cockpit with the pilots... I almost never want to fly again!
No sensationalism in the crash scene as Hollywood is wont to do.
The almost quiet delivery of the scenes made it that much more terrifying!
So so happy I watched this movie.
It made me walk away with a different sense of how I judge the operators behind disasters: pilots, train engineers, bus drivers, etc. You really never know what to do until you're in the situation. Manuals and guides are great if you have all the time in the world and nothing at stake, but when the seconds are ticking down and it's life or death.. whole new ballgame. And Sully won the World Series!

I am an aviation buff. I watch just about every movie there is about flight... I can honestly say this this is the most accurate depiction of pilots at work.

If you start a timer you will find the film matches the actual NTSB time line, exactly. The look of concern on the faces of the pilots is accurate as is the checklist count offs.

Tom Hanks is a brilliant actor, of course, and this film, is his best work in my opinion.

I bought this movie when it first arrived on Amazon... and have shown it to dozens of my friends who either never watched it before, or wanted to see it again.

The only negative I would give the Film is the almost Evil portrayal of the NTSB investigators. I'm not a big pro-government guy... but one of the reasons air traffic is so safe is because of the thorough investigation that each airline incident gets. Yes the Investigstors are tough....its their job. They are not as hateful as portrayed... but it does stir emotion in the audience, which always makes a movie better. If you read the NTSB report (it's available on line) you'll see that every aspect of flight 1541 was examined. And once you see how much really goes into these investigations you'll respect the actions of Captsin Sullenberger and his crew.

A 100 % survival rate on a water landing (ditching) almost NEVER happens.

Really an amazing story. Having worked as a flight attendant for over a decade I have great appreciation for the responsibility the captain feels toward his crew, and passengers,(you will see this in Sully, and every other pilot flying commercial aircraft); and the crew toward the passengers.Flight crews train every year for water landings, and we used to believe the possibility of survival was near zero. The movie very subtly comments on that with glances, and inflections. Now Sully's landing on the Hudson shows that any airline disaster is potentially survivable, and all that training is for very good reason.

I enjoyed watching this - it did not come off as a documentary. The acting skill of Tom Hanks, and Aaron Eckhart made it extremely compelling to watch. While the NTSB seems like the bad guy here - they have a job to do as well. While we all gripe about poor service on various airlines it is important to remember that the folks getting us from point A to point B are not only there to make us comfortable (which is important), but primarily to make our trip safe. This movie will remind us all of that. Also the incredible ability for people of the nation, (New York in this case) to all pull together when it really counts. Thanks to Clint Eastwood for understanding this was a story that needed to be told in a "big Hollywood" sort of way.

As a private pilot, and having a career in aviation, I was looking forward to seeing how this great pilot was treated in the film, and how accurate the flying information was. The director/screenwriters liked to tease you with flashbacks and dream sequences (without telling you that was what you were seeing), and the aviation content of those were way off base. The 'factual' sequences though, appeared to me to be very accurate. Since the crash sequence was repeated several times, to show it from different perspectives, I was wishing they would do a split screen(s) to show what the various entities were doing. One of the more telling things to me was how the air traffic controller (my profession) did not immediately get the gravity of the situation. That is a common thing in our field. We spend hours, months, or even years without seeing a serious emergency, so switching our brain to that mode is not easy, nor immediate. In this case, I was wishing the controller would "leave them alone" to fly the plane, but I had the benefit of knowing they weren't going to make it to an airport. I thought the role must have been particularly tough for Hanks, as most before this he could adapt to being "Tom". Not in this case. We all sat riveted listening to Sully in interview after interview, and Hanks had his work cut out for him to treat it properly. All in all it's an excellent take on an amazing moment in aviation history.

This movie was an eye-opener for me! I had no idea that "Captain Sully" and Co-pilot Jeffrey Skiles were looked at so critically by the NTSB in the immediate aftermath of the incident. Of course, in the end, the NTSB cleared him of any wrongdoing and even praised him and the entire crew in the final report. He stayed calm, using his skills and training to land the plane in the only place he could - he is a true American HERO! Of course, his co-pilot and flight attendants Doreen Welsh, Donna Dent, Sheila Dail are also heroes, taking their cue from their captain, they kept it calm in the cabin, clearly telling the passengers what actions they needed to take, at each step during the crisis, so that they could quickly and safely evacuate the plane. Another group of unsung heroes that day are the boat owner/operators on the river that day who quickly altered their courses and went to help evacuate the passengers and crew who were stranded on the plane wings, in life rafts, and in the water. The water temperature that day was a truly chilly 41 degrees and the air temperature a freezing 19 degrees, putting every single one of those passengers in serious danger from severe hypothermia. Very few of them had their coats on as they had probably just taken them off as they got themselves settled in for their flight, the air was freezing cold, the water was cold, all of them were wet and the danger was real. The boater's very quick response times in getting those people out of the elements, wrapped in dry blankets and transported to shore to be accessed and treated by professionals for injuries and/or hypothermia certainly contributed significantly to the amazing fact that none of the passengers suffered from severe hypothermia after their ordeal. This movie was wonderfully done, I could feel the stress and mounting tension caused by the NTSB investigators. I felt the frustration of both Captain Sully and Pilot Skiles as they lived those first few days after the crash in a very odd dichotomy being grilled and questioned by the NTSB in the daytime, hailed as heroes on the national news each evening. Clint Eastwood is a powerhouse director and Tom Hanks has amazing depth as an actor so this film was going to be a good one and I am glad I watched it. MIRACLE on the Hudson is exactly what the landing and safe evacuation of all "souls on board" was!

In our current crazy world, we need heroes. Sully Sullenberger is a hero in every way. He saved the lives of 155 people.

Clint Eastwood was the right director for this film, and Tom Hanks is perfect. There is no back story or biographical stuff about the hero. It's not necessary. Other directors would have wasted a lot of film time with that. Eastwood focuses on the heroic act.

It's a short (90 minutes), concise movie with an amazing crash scene. But the best scene shows Sully, finally standing on land by the Hudson River after the landing, looking at the partially submerged plane and thinking of all the lives he saved. Very emotional.

Sully was incessantly interviewed by the press, and in his laconic manner, he says. "I just did my job." How simple, human, and inspirational, in this world of political corruption and greed.

Well done.

An amazing event can only be complimented by a serious effort to make a movie about it. That was accomplished in Sully, directed by Clint Eastwood and starring Tom Hanks as the titular pilot. It is a film that is excellent on its own, but the experience can be enhanced by reading "Highest Duty", on which the picture is based.
As everyone knows, on Thursday, January 15th, 2009, Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger landed US Airways Flight 1549 in the Hudson River after losing both engines to a bird strike and determining he’d be unable to reach an airport. His action resulted in all 155 passengers and crew surviving and being rescued by local ferry boats. What follows is instant praise and celebrity for the modest veteran pilot, along with an inquiry by the National Transportation Safety Board and recurring nightmares about possible failures to save everyone.
When it comes to the events of that day, Eastwood nails it. Everything you experience on the screen happened, from the eerie silence in the main cabin to the scuba divers jumping from great heights to rescue people in the water. While the latter would be just one of a series of action-movie tropes in just about any other movie, it all serves to honor the actions taken to ensure such a miraculous outcome. I don’t know who played everyone, but maybe it’s for the best. After all, people who didn’t know one another came together that day.
An important element is the lack of any music during any of the crash sequences. It all depends on the dialogue and sounds heard in the foreground and background. Adding music would have been another easy way out to raise the tension and I'm glad this was a road not taken. The moment speaks for itself and Clint Eastwood understood this.
While Tom Hanks can add this to his list of brilliant performances without a hint of shame, it is Aaron Eckhart who steals the show, playing First Officer Jeff Skiles. From his remarks about Sully’s business and website (all real) to his conduct during the emergency to his closing remark, he rises to the occasion much like his real-life counterpart.
Unfortunately, the NTSB doesn’t get such a positive, or even fair, treatment. From the beginning, the investigators seem intent on proving Sully’s actions to have been improper, a decision which could ruin his career. This is a far cry from what really happened, where the agency praised the pilot’s heroic actions within twenty-four hours of the crash. It seemed like an easy way to give the film a villain and, as noted by a reviewer, “worked to defend a hero who didn’t need defending”. Sure, there were questions about whether they could have made it back to the airport and questions asked about things like drinking are standard procedure, but the prosecutorial attitude was unnecessary. Captain Sullenberger did deal with some self-doubt and PTSD after the incident. Why couldn’t the movie have been more about that? If nothing else, this was a waste of Anna Gunn’s talents.
Otherwise, I have just two minor nitpicks. A recording of an earlier event in the movie leaves out Jeff Skiles’s “wo”. I feel like the recorder would have picked that up, especially since it recorded absolutely everything else before and after it. Second, Jeff Skiles’s final line was one of the best parts of the movie. It’s just too bad he didn’t really say that. It would have been just as awesome.
But for all my complaining and nit-picking, this movie tells an amazing story about an incredible event. It should be celebrated for pulling it off and pulling it off so well. Like Captain Sullenberger and flying, Clint Eastwood applies his learned lessons and experiences to only improve in his own right. It’s a phenomenal film for its story, director, the actors and their performances, and the sheer experience of what happened. I’m sure you saw it on the news, but this is something else entirely. I encourage everyone to see it. Enjoy.