Overrated 'Sully' proves Clint Eastwood is finally past his prime

I have long been a fan of Clint Eastwood, both as an actor and as a director, but ever since his ill-fated 'performance' at the Republican National Convention back in 2012, it's become increasingly difficult to separate his politics from his cinematic prose.

It hasn't helped that many of his recent offerings, like the blockbuster American Sniper, offer an effective if simplistic and jingoistic take on the modern world. The hit 2016 biopic Sully, unfortunately, falls under that category too.

At 86 years old, I have marveled at the consistency and skill he has shown in his work. Eastwood seems to have first peaked as a director at 62 with 1992's Unforgiven and then in the early 2000s he had a second hot streak with acclaimed films like Mystic River, Million Dollar Baby and Letters from Iwo Jima, which culminated with his biggest blockbuster to date as an actor, the slyly sophisticated Gran Torino in 2008.

But then, in my estimation, his films started to fall off both in terms of style and substance.

His penchant for quick shoots (he is known for favoring only a couple takes on any given scene) and no frills narratives sometimes neutered films like Invictus. And in the case of J. Edgar, his attempt to be flashier and play with the timeline, turned what should have been a riveting film into a rudderless mess.

Eastwood has shown good taste in his subject matter, but his cinematic contention that there are stalwart heroes who are constantly getting stymied by no-nothing bureaucrats has not worn well. And it's this ethos that hamstrings Sully, a film that probably would have been inevitably slight no matter who directed it.

Tom Hanks is admirable and solid in the lead role, although I'm mystified by why the performance was generating Oscar buzz, besides his track record as an actor. The iconic landing on the Hudson River is well staged, but not quite as harrowing as the crash in Denzel Washington's 2012 film Flight. And the rest of the film feels padded with unnecessary dream sequences and an unconscionable decision to make villainous straw men out of the NTSB.

What is really a rather simple story of an experience pilot who made a gutsy and shrewd decision that saved a lot of lives, is turned into something akin to an indictment of the federal government and an exercise in unadulterated hero worship.

That's not to say that the real-life Sully isn't a hero. But it's as if Eastwood didn't discover any real tension in the story -- besides the events of the crash itself -- and so he manufactured it. This wouldn't matter if it weren't for the fact that for so many viewers, his film will be the first and last draft of history.

Of course, Eastwood will always be a movie icon, and I think deservedly so. But his stubborn refusal to depart from some of his tried and true tactics and lend some of his more recent films the complexity and/or nuance they warrant, suggest for me that his best work has already been done, and will be what his legacy is built on.