THE 15:17 TO PARIS Review

The 15:17 to Paris is not a good movie and likely never should have been a movie in the first place. Prior to Gone Girl coming out in 2014 there was an interview with director David Fincher where he stated in regards to the adaptation process that, "The book is many things. You have to choose which aspect you want to make a movie from." This is likely what writer Dorothy Blyskal should have done were she to stand the chance of making a compelling picture out of the lives of the three young men that saved a passenger train full of people from being killed by a terrorist in 2015. There is no disputing what these guys did was heroic and that, if their story was going to be turned into a feature film, that it deserved to be a compelling one, but The 15:17 to Paris is not that movie. No, The 15:17 to Paris isn't really much of a movie at all despite the fact it could be looked at as one of great risk and ambition. Directed by Clint Eastwood, Blyskal's script decides to tell the broad story of the friendship between our three protagonists whom Eastwood decided to cast with the real heroes themselves rather than having actors portray them. Unfortunately, Blyskal not choosing an aspect of these guy's lives to zero in on and make a movie out of essentially separates the picture into two distinct halves: one being the military recruitment ad the first half functions as while the second forty-five minutes may as well be a European travelogue with the event we're all in the theater to see being tacked on in the last twenty or so minutes. This final sequence is the only part of the film that holds any real tension, any real drama, or hint of any real style that resembles that of a film produced by a major studio and made by an Academy Award winning director and actor. Of course, just as The 15:17 to Paris probably never should have been a feature film it was never going to be a feature film in the traditional fashion, but more one that solidified Eastwood is now making statements with his efforts rather than simply pondering and contemplating with his art. For Eastwood, The 15:17 to Paris is the definition of heroism; no qualms, no frills, no debate about it. That's fine and I can appreciate the choice, but defining a certain quality doesn't automatically make that representation of the same quality. Spencer Stone, Anthony Sadler, and Alek Skarlatos are heroes, no doubt, but their movie is (unfortunately) pretty terrible.    

First Trailer for Clint Eastwood's THE 15:17 TO PARIS

The first trailer for director Clint Eastwood's latest, The 15:17 to Paris (what an awkward title), has landed online via Warner Bros. and to call this an experiment of sorts in skirting the lines between fiction and non-fiction storytelling feels like something of an understatement. Most of the time, while films "inspired by" or "based on" true stories are considered to be works of non-fiction there is this understanding that the film and what happens in it is "still a painting and not a photograph" as writer/director Aaron Sorkin explains it. You use the parts you need to tell a story and you don't use the parts you don't need. Life doesn't play itself out in a series of scenes that form a perfect narrative and people don't speak in dialogue-these are movie things-Sorkin continues and he's right. There is not way to capture all of the factors that contribute even to a single instance of our existence to where an audience watching it on screen would understand or experience this moment in the same way the actual person who experienced it in real time. That said, Eastwood's latest is based on the story of real heroes Anthony Sadler, Oregon National Guardsman Alek Skarlatos, and U.S. Air Force Airman First Class Spencer Stone, who stopped a terrorist attack on a train on August 21, 2015. Sounds about right you say? Sounds right up Eastwood's alley you think? Especially considering his last movie extended the crashing of a plane on the Hudson river into an hour and a half drama that exposed some of the not so public aspects of Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger's heroism. Well, I hope you're right as The 15:17 to Paris will seemingly cover the full life stories of the heroes and the events that led up to the attack. All of that taken into consideration, this initial trailer is certainly intriguing and I'm anxious to see how these non-actors, but real-life heroes adapt to re-enacting this definitive moment in their lives as well as how Eastwood intercuts the flashback moments that have real and experienced actors working in them. Hopefully, the juxtaposition won't be too jarring. The 15:17 to Paris also stars Jenna Fischer, Judy Greer, Ray Corasani, PJ Byrne, Tony Hale, Thomas Lennon, and opens on February 9, 2018.