The 15:17 to Paris

The 15:17 to Paris

Starring Spencer Stone, Anthony Sadler, Alek Skarlatos, Judy Greer

Directed by Clint Eastwood

The Story:
Growing up in a quiet suburban town, lifelong friends Spencer Stone and Alek Skarlatos spent their growing up time in trouble with the principal of their Christian school, deemed by another teacher as having ADD, and are often seen as the invisible minority.  They befriend fellow troublemaker Anthony Sadler, and the three friends become lifelong companions.

Years later, Alek is now in the military, and Spencer wants to be an Air Force pararescue, but is denied due to his poor depth perception.  He joins another facet of the Air Force, and decides with Alek to do a backpacking trip through Europe.  They convince Anthony to go with them, and the three friends parade through Europe enjoying one last get-together before they're stationed.

Then they board the 15:17 train to Paris from Amsterdam, and encounter a terrorist aboard who wants to cause death and catastrophe, but they step up to protect themselves and the lives of everyone on the train, making them heroes.

The Synopsis:
Clint Eastwood is an American legend, an actor and director with so much acclaim and accolades it's too numerous to list.  He's directed some of the best films in recent memory, and brought to life modern-day true-life stories in a way that has more impact because it's still fresh in our memories.  His previous work - the Tom Hanks-led "Sully" - told the true story of Sully Sullenberger, who miraculously landed a plane on the Hudson River with no casualties.  His next work was another recent true-life event: the rescue of several passengers of a Parisian train at the hands of three American men who stepped up in the face of danger and prevented a huge terrorist attack.

What made "The 15:17 to Paris" unique is that Eastwood enlisted the three actual heroes - Spencer Stone, Anthony Sadler, and Alek Skarlatos - to star as themselves, instead of casting famous actors to play their parts.  While this was a risky move, it helped add a deeper sense of truth and emotion to the film.  Yet, it also showed that some people can't act, as is the story with the three men.  While they're real life heroes, they're not big screen actors - and that's perfectly alright.  We need more real heroes anyway.

While the best part of the film is in the final twenty minutes - when the attack on the train is re-created - the remaining part of the film (which, thankfully, is Eastwood's shortest film) is a jumbled mess of differing styles and themes.  While his storytelling worked perfectly well with films like "American Sniper," here the story was muddied and - tragically - boring.

We see the three friends as pre-teens, who do the typical pre-teen things: get into innocent trouble (like cursing in a Christian school), playing outside and other generic things.  And we just sit and wait for the big event to come.

We then see them as adults.  Anthony is not doing a whole lot it seems.  Spencer seemingly can't hold anything down due to his own lack of will power, or something like that.  Alek...um...he's kind of around I guess.  There's no question that the film has Spencer at the center, while his other friends have hardly any screen time or development.  Why did Alek join the military?  We don't really know.  We know why Spencer did - because he met a Marine recruiter at the smoothie shop where he worked - but other than that we don't really know what drove him to join either (despite his mother mentioning when he was younger and he saw a war on television, he would always want to jump right in - something surprisingly not mentioned in the flashback sequence).  And we just sit and wait for the big event to come.

Then we see them together again, exploring and experiencing Europe like any three young Americans would - by getting drunk, hitting on girls, and obnoxiously taking selfies everywhere (if I had a dime every time Anthony mentioned "selfie," I would've earned the money back I spent on the ticket, plus enough for a large popcorn).  The editing here is surprisingly terrible for an Eastwood film - it's more like some nobody who goes to Europe and forces his friends to watch the highlight reel.  And we just sit and wait for the big event to come.

Finally they board the train, and the big event comes.  It's interesting, especially if that's how it really played out, because it fully focused on Spencer's lead and hardly any help from Alek or Anthony, until after the terrorist is subdued by Spencer.  Still, this is the crowning part of the film, and when Eastwood is at his best - he expertly made the event so claustrophobic and chaotic that he really made you feel like you were aboard the train as well.

It was a risk for Eastwood to cast the real heroes, but that was also the main draw for me to see it.  If he had cast big-name actors (my friend suggested Spencer would've been played by Channing Tatum - I say he would've been Alek, with Donald Glover as Anthony, and Liam Hemsworth as Spencer), I wouldn't have been as interested to see it as I was with the real heroes at the helm.  While they're not actors (and their lack of acting shows), they gave a sense of truthfulness to what happened and made it more interesting to watch.  Oddly enough, it's the seasoned actors who give the most cringe-worthy performances.

As Spencer and Alek's mothers, Judy Greer and Jenna Fisher are absolutely atrocious.  Their opening scene involves them talking with a teacher who suggests their young children should take ADD medicine, to which Greer's character replies, "My God is bigger than your statistics."  Cringe-worthy to say the least.  They're not given a whole lot of development outside playing the generic single-mother roles, and they just airbrush their way through their performances.

Then there's the events leading up to "the moment" that made me wonder if these discussions on screen actually happened in real life.  Several times on their trip they questioned whether or not to go to Paris, one saying that something huge and monumental could happen to them there.  If that's not foreshadowing whacking us upside the head, I don't know what is.  Those scenes seemed padded and pointless, as were many other scenes in the film - one in particular sticks out to me, when Alek is on deployment and leaves his rucksack behind.  They go back to get it, and find a man who stole it.  They take the sack back, and all Alek was missing was his hat.  That's it.  I have no idea why that section was included in the film - except to pad the runtime or give Alek one actual performance, I'm not sure.  Unfortunately, there's more scenes like that throughout that made me wonder why Eastwood would make a feature-length film with this story - it would've worked far better as a short film, or made in a way that followed the men after they returned home from the attack.  Still, we got what we got, and it wasn't a whole lot.

The Summary:
While featuring the real life heroes, "The 15:17 to Paris" failed to keep the attention of the audience and was a surprising letdown from seasoned veteran Clint Eastwood. 

The Score: C+