Let's All Go to the Movies!

In a tribute to the good old days of the Don and Mike Show, please allow me to introduce a new feature to these proceedings:

Reviews Of Movies I Haven't Seen Yet

Let's talk about "Sully," the one with Tom Hanks playing Capt Chesley Sullenberger, the courageous, heroic, and most important, CAPABLE airline pilot who plopped his plane down in the Hudson River after some geese flew into the plane's engines, meaning that their flight ended his (and theirs).

Dirty Harry and Forrest Gump 

We all remember that day in 2009 when Sullenberger put the plane down on a surface much softer than a highway or airport too far to reach.  He made sure that all 155 people aboard made it alive, and wound up as the toast of the nation, appearing on Letterman and all the other big TV shows with the possible exception of the Home Shopping Club, which lost a possible fortune by not hiring him to hawk flotation devices for future passengers.

Anyway, Sully did well and it's only natural to make a movie to help us relive the experience.

But Clint Eastwood directed the picture, and apparently, the last bit of cheese fell off old Clint's cracker a few years ago, as evidenced by the conversation he once had with no one sitting in a chair.

I judge movies by the ads they run on TV and the occasional quick interview with the stars on "GMA" and "CBS This Morning."

And I find it irksome that old Clint just had to introduce some made-up drama into this drama. In the clips, we see Tom Hanks as Sully, and someone is calling his name, but "Sully" is just doing that hundred-yard stare, so we are to think that the trauma of that water "land"ing caused the good captain to go into flashback mode.

And of course, they show scenes of an investigation before an august committee of stern-faced individuals asking if Sully realized he could have just as easily glided to a nice stopover in Cleveland or if he had been hitting the sauce moments before takeoff or if he had been arguing with his wife.

None of this happened, to my memory, which is fairly reliable for stuff from seven years ago. 

I hate it when movies have to create a conflict or commotion where clearly none exist, just to have a peg to hang a movie on. 

For his part, Sullenberger has issued a statement about the film: 

 "The story being told came from my experiences, and reflects the many challenges that I faced and successfully overcame both during and after the flight. I was involved in the development and am thrilled it’s being brought to the screen by master filmmaker Clint Eastwood, starring Tom Hanks."

Gee, that doesn't sound like it was written by someone at a movie studio at all, does it?

By the way, the importance of show-biz timing is demonstrated here by master comic Norm Macdonald, who went on the Conan show a month after the original "land"ing to claim he had made a movie called "Sully Sullenberger: Airport Pilot" six months beforehand.   He said he didn't have a suitable ending...at the time.