In person, Clint Eastwood recently has the tendency to come across as brash and combative (in an August interview he derided much of America as a “pussy generation” while telling people to “just fucking get over” Donald Trump’s many controversial remarks). As a film-maker, however, the 86-year-old is the antithesis. His best work – Letters From Iwo Jima, Million Dollar Baby, Mystic River, Unforgiven – all share an understated quality that means the emotional impact of his stories rings authentic. Eastwood’s most recent, Sully, squarely fits that bill.

Starring Tom Hanks as Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger, the pilot responsible for the extraordinary landing of a plane on the Hudson river in 2008, with no casualties, Sully is an unabashed crowdpleaser about a hero fighting to maintain that title when corporate greed threatens to tarnish his image. There’s little crass audience manipulation in Eastwood’s depiction of the harrowing plane landing and the surprising investigation that followed – he’s the type of director who just gives it to you plain and simple.

For audiences, the chance to see an IMAX-shot recreation of the shocking landing of US Airways Flight 1549 in the middle of the river is no doubt a big selling point. In that sense, Sully delivers tenfold.

Eastwood and his screenwriter Todd Komarnicki (working off of Sullenberger’s book Highest Duty: My Search for What Really Matters) make the surprising decision to revisit the event multiple times throughout the lean 98 minutes runtime, to offer the perspectives of Sullenberger and his co-pilot Jeff Skiles (Aaron Eckhart), the flight’s passengers and attendants, the air-traffic controllers, and even the emergency-response crew. The reenactments are all equally compelling, although one tracking the experience of the passengers gets marred a bit by overt sentimentalism.

Even more horrifying are the nightmare scenarios Eastwood conjures up, during which Sullenberger imagines a fatal outcome had he followed through on the contested strategy of returning to LaGuardia Airport with the plane’s engines failing. Watching an aircraft smash into New York skyscrapers might prove too unsettling for some, recalling in blunt terms the horrors of 9/11. The terrifying sequences do however go a long way to sell that Sullenberger’s actions saved not only the 155 lives aboard, but also countless more.

That factor comes into play during the aftermath of the incident, when the National Transportation Safety Board keep Sullenbeger and Skiles hostage in a sterile New York hotel to accost the pair with a barrage of specific questions, ascertaining whether they in fact did the right thing. The interrogations are fittingly infuriating (at one point, Sullenberger is asked if he has troubles at home), albeit a little silly. Mike O’Malley plays one of the lead investigators as broadly evil, smirking his way through the inquisition like a Disney villain. Anna Gunn fares better, lending a needed dose of humanity to her committee member.

Sporting white hair to resemble Sullenberger, Hanks delivers an internal and sympathetic performance. Eastwood doesn’t burrow too deeply into his protagonist’s psyche, other than to visibly demonstrate that he’s haunted by the landing. Still, Hanks, who’s uncommonly, well, sullen, for much of the film, goes a long way to convey Sullenberger’s conflicted anguish. As his worried at-home wife, Laura Linney does some admirable phone acting, emoting believably with only a prop to interact with. But it all never quite takes off.