At one point during Clint Eastwood’s intelligent and splendidly uplifting true-life drama, a character muses on the fact that: “It’s been a while since New York has had news this good – especially with an airplane in it.”

The antidote to the events of 9/11 certainly gave added reason to be cheerful when a disabled passenger plane was successfully ditched on the Hudson River in January 2009.

Flight 1549 had taken off from LaGuardia Airport en route for North Carolina, when geese flew into both engines, forcing them to fail. Without power, the pilot Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger performed a flawless, and entirely unlikely landing on the river. All 155 passengers and crew survived. And the word most on people’s lips was “miracle”.

The film stars Tom Hanks as Sully, America’s favourite Everyman playing a reluctant hero – a pilot of steely calm in the cockpit, who panics at the very thought of being the centre of attention. With Eastwood on his best, most characteristic form – infusing his storytelling with minimal fuss and quiet integrity – it’s a winning combination.

Eastwood’s approach is particularly interesting for its focus. While the scenes of the plane’s extraordinary decent are filmed with jaw-dropping realism, the emphasis is not on the action, but the immediate investigation into the incident. And the three intimidating federal inspectors have one notable question: rather than the near-impossible task of landing on water, could the

pilot have simply returned to

the airport?

This lends a well-known incident, with its happy conclusion, a tension it may otherwise have lacked, as well as added psychological depth. Sully has recurring nightmares, in which his plane ploughs horrendously into city skyscrapers. With the media calling him a hero but the investigators pouring over data, this very confident man is forced to wonder himself whether he made the right decision – or got away with the wrong one.

Eastwood moves back and forth in time: in the aftermath, Sully and his steadfast co-pilot Jeff Skiles (Aaron Eckhart) hide from the media frenzy in a Manhattan hotel, in between bouts of adulation and scrutiny; before the flight, there is deliberate banality – late passenger arrivals, Sully chatting to airport staff, those safety demonstrations that we all too often ignore; further back again, a few seminal moments in Sully’s development as a pilot.

Throughout, the director adopts a procedural tone, which serves to highlight our appreciation of professionals at work – whether it’s Hanks and Eckhart investing their cockpit checks with terrific authenticity, or scenes involving the air traffic controllers, and the coastguard and others who will so speedily pluck the passengers off the slowly sinking plane.

With white hair and moustache, Hanks is a good likeness for his character. The look seems in keeping with the gravitas and even dourness of a man who takes his job incredibly seriously and is affronted that anyone would doubt him. It’s a restrained, effective performance, nicely balanced by Eckhart’s, which offers the sort of twinkle-eyed lightness we’d usually expect from the star.

The pair exude a winning rapport, not least when defending themselves against the semantic insinuations of the investigators, the pilots having to insist on the “forced water landing”, not “crash”, and on their settling on, not in the Hudson.

As Sully’s wife, endlessly voicing concern on the other end of a phone, Laura Linney doesn’t get much of an opportunity to show her calibre. But there’s fun to be had in guessing which of the real-life emergency workers are playing themselves.

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