By Tom Green
★★☆☆☆
The importance of high quality, practiced acting has never been clearer to me after sitting through 90 minutes of Clint Eastwood’s latest derail of a project.
The 15:17 to Paris tells the real-life story of three American soldiers whose brave act foiled a terrorist attack on a high-speed European train from Amsterdam to the French capital in August 2015.
Sounds great on paper, right? But given the real action lasts all but three minutes, there’s a lot of unnecessary garbage to sit through first.
Cast as themselves, we follow the journey of trio Spencer Stone, Anthony Sadler and Alek Skarlatos from elementary school buddies in California to international heroes.
While the idea itself may well be a pleasant one, the on-screen reality is as dull and drab as the school history lessons the three sit through as kids.
Credit to Eastwood for making the unusual decision to cast the real-life men in their roles, but it’s this that ultimately undermines what might have otherwise been a good film. As it is, it won’t make the list of his classics.
While these are undoubtedly three incredibly good-natured men with a heroic story to tell, besides the few minutes of real action the audience wait too long for, they haven’t an iota of screen presence between them.
The audience are here for the train scene, and the lads know it themselves. We can all agree that three lifelong friends foiling a terror attack is a great story – but the interrailing holiday details are probably best kept in the diary to be dug up on chat shows and the like; not the movie screens.
The hour and a half, which could have easily been wrapped up in a twenty-minute documentary, often had me cringing in embarrassment at the so-called ‘acting’ I was watching.
To be fair to Spencer Stone, he gives it his all. He’s the better of the three, but the other two are utterly hopeless. Look out for Alek Skarlatos’ attempts at banter during a Skype chat while based in Afghanistan; it’s almost painful to watch.
In what nearly turns into a European travel blog with a backing track you’d expect to hear on an advert for Saga, the audience endure a series of meaningless scenes in which Stone and Sadler walk through the streets of Rome and buy ice-cream in Venice. Harmless but totally irrelevant. Nobody has paid to see that.
It’s not all bad though. Certainly, Eastwood’s directive flare does creep out of the woodwork slightly when the real action eventually erupts.
Faced with an armed terrorist emerging from the train toilets, the trio are quick to leap at him before a brawl ensues in the carriage. But while there is indeed bloodshed and flying fists, it’s over in a matter of minutes.
You cannot help but admire their bravery, certainly when the real and grainier footage of their French award ceremony intertwines with the acted snippets – but if you want my advice, wait until the DVD is in HMV’s bargain bin and fast-forward the first hour.
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