I haven't seen Sully. I don’t' intend to. I like Eastwood Movies ... generally .. but I tend not to like Hanks movies. Normally Eastwood would win me over but when I saw the clips, it looked boring. And there was something else. The film was emphasizing things that happened post crash. Things where the authorities were questioning decisions that Sully took.
As the article says:
With Sully, the film-makers were faced with a problem: how to make a feature-length movie about a six-minute flight?
Answer - focus on the actions after the crash.
“Until I read the script, I didn’t know the investigative board was trying to paint the picture that he had done the wrong thing. They were kind of railroading him,†says Eastwood in one promotional trailer.
That's it - neither did I. I was surprised that I hadn’t .. very surprised.
It's not surprising Eastwood (and me .. 'ed') was ignorant of any railroading by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), since it’s a narrative absent from Highest Duty, or anything actually said or written by the NTSB.
And that's the problem. In the future like so many of these fictional accounts of history - they will over take real history and facts will be forgotten. It’s the substance of future conspiracy theory.
Around the world, the NTSB’s investigations are regarded as setting the gold standard for impartiality, perceptiveness and making recommendations with important safety benefits. The NTSB has saved countless lives. Yet the NTSB has no regulatory ability: to turn its recommendations into practice, the board relies solely on a moral authority founded on its reputation for diligence. The stakes are high – the board currently has a list of 10 critical safety improvements that it’s trying to get implemented, including, for example, positive train control, something that would have spared 243 people last year from a deadly Amtrak derailment.
Sully has smeared this reputation for the sake of a hero who needed no defending. It will create a headwind in the minds of the public and policymakers that the NTSB will be struggling against for years to come.