“Sully” represented something of a “Titanic” challenge for director Clint Eastwood and screenwriter Todd Komarnicki: Most people already know the story. Well.

On Jan. 15, 2009, US Airways Flight 1549 departed from New York’s LaGuardia Airport. Both engines failed after ingesting a flock of birds soon after takeoff.

Rather than try to reach an airport, Capt. Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger and first officer Jeffrey Skiles opted for an audacious emergency landing in the Hudson River. All 155 people on board survived.

So, how thrilling can a movie be when we already know what happens?

How about can’t-breathe thrilling? Or wish-I-had-a-seatbelt-on-my-chair thrilling?

“Sully” begins with Flight 1549, smoke billowing from its fried engines, coasting over Manhattan, slowly descending until it crashes into a skyscraper in a ball of flames.

Sullenberger, played by Tom Hanks with white, wispy hair and a matching mustache, awakens from this recurring nightmare. It’s not a cheesy Brian DePalma dream sequence designed for cheap jolts. Rather, a stark reminder of what might have happened.

We don’t get to the actual crash (or “water landing” as Sullenberger keeps correcting officials) until well into the movie, and when it arrives, “Sully” brings a new realism to the phrase “You Are There.”

We’ve seen kazillions of airplane disaster movies, but this one makes us feel the G-forces because of something we don’t even notice: the sound.

The whining engines, the bumps and thuds of retracting wheels, grinding noises outside the plane, the subtle sounds of “gaspers” (adjustable air vents above each seat) place us into an audio environment so authentic that when those birds hit the turbines, we feel it.

“Sully” presents another impressively lean work of film craftsmanship from now-86-year-old director Eastwood, less interested in exploring gray areas of heroism than celebrating critical thinking skills and how New York’s first responders showed the world how it’s done.

Unlike many of Eastwood’s protagonists, Sullenberger doesn’t settle

conflicts with guns or witty comebacks, but with intellect, reason, and a healthy suspicion for corporate and bureaucratic authority.

Heralded as the hero of the “Miracle on the Hudson,” Sullenberger is too experienced and politically savvy to let his guard down in the midst of public adulation.

The National Transportation Safety Board says he still had one operational engine and could have landed at LaGuardia or Teterboro Airport. Computer simulations prove that Sullenberger could have done that without risking lives and destroying an airbus. The NTSB clearly intends to hang the pilot out for his costly error in judgment.

Hanks, in a tempered, dramatically economic performance, portrays Sullenberger as a classic Frank Capra protagonist, a responsible citizen forced to challenge the practices of American corporations and their scapegoating money interests.

As the underutilized Mrs. Sullenberger, Laura Linney can do little more than act appropriately concerned while on the telephone.

It falls to Aaron Eckhart’s loyal first officer Skiles to rub in how Sullenberger’s reasoned responses really miff NTSB members.

“You’re not used to having answers to your guesses,” Skiles practically gloats to the board.

Board members, unlike us, are not amused.