I have the greatest admiration for Clint Eastwood, both as an actor and director. In the directorial role he never fails to astound me with the breadth of topics and genres he is prepared to operate within. Even his failures such as Absolute Power and Jersey Boys still have degrees of interest. But with The 15:17 to Paris, he's clearly hit the wall.
This is essentially a 90 minute re - enactment of events leading up to, during and after, 3 American tourists (thankfully) thwarted a terrorist attack on a Paris bound train from Amsterdam in 2015. In bringing first time screenwriter Dorothy Blyskal's script, to the screen, Eastwood has decided to have the 3 real - life gentleman play themselves in the film adaption. It's a brave move with arguably only qualified success.
For all those history police, that continually charge historical cinematic dramas such as this, with not being factual enough, this time they should have little to complain about. I'm sure with the real life heroes aboard, the project rarely strays from the known facts of the incident, where certainly people's lives were on the line.
The trouble here is there is clearly not enough content to make a stand alone feature. We are thus delivered quite boring, pedestrian stories of the men as children, teenagers and later as adults with military backgrounds. This is not to forget all the "great" travel log footage of the guys wandering through various European cities and shock, horror, going to discoes and meeting the odd girl, prior to the fateful journey on said train. I found it tedious and dull and the movie itself, despite its relatively short length, extremely padded out.
The 15:17 to Paris is a well - intentioned tribute to 3 real life heroes, but it would have been better dealt with in something like a 60 Minutes segment, rather than an expanded feature film. Hard to believe that this is a movie from the same director who gave us (in the same biographical vein) the terrific, American Sniper.
