The 15:17 to Paris

2018 true story movie

Rating: 5/20

Plot: Three bros stop a terrorist attack on a train.

Clint Eastwood has completely lost it. Whatever "It" might be, he's lost it at the age of 137 or however old he is. This movie is an embarrassing perfect storm of terrible writing, bad acting, and inept directing from a director who should know better.

I was offended pretty much from the beginning with a pointless attack on public schools and a heroic "My God is bigger than your statistics!" mic drop moment. I groaned loudly enough that the two old people with me in the theater (the only two others) both half-turned to look at me. A second reference to the evils of statistics, Jamba Juice product placement, a Flags of Our Fathers poster, a cliched training montage, and lines like "This isn't good bye; just a see-you-later" had me rolling my eyes more than I've ever rolled my eyes while watching a movie in a theater. In fact, I'm pretty sure eyes have never rolled this hard in the history of eyes!

The biggest issue is probably the performances. I thought the child actors were pretty bad, but then I saw their adult counterparts and realized that the casting director had to find kids who could act as well as the real-life guys playing themselves in this movie. Alek Skarlatos, Anthony Sadler, and Spencer Stone might be real-life heroes, but that doesn't mean they should be acting in feature films. I'm not even sure they should appear in Snapchats or home videos of birthday parties after this actually.

Other legendarily-bad moments: Lots of God in this, mostly delivered by Jenna Fischer who reads her lines like she's being forced to in some sort of hostage standoff;  CPR dummy that manages to out-act Stone in one scene; two moments when Clint Eastwood, or his cinematographer, get a little randy and linger on the posteriors of college-aged gals for a little too long; an utterly pointless tour of Italy where the characters crack bad jokes, talk about their selfie sticks, and order and consume Gelato; a scene where kids are admiring a firearm that was obviously put in the movie to give the NRA folk something to masturbate to.

And I know what you're thinking, defenders of 15:17 to Paris: those scenes, like the extended Gelato scene, only showcase that these are regular everyday guys who had no intentions of ever becoming heroes. Showcasing the mundane was Eastwood's way of emphasizing the Everyman-aspect of this trio. Maybe so, but you can't do that and have them engaging in conversations about how they're going to be heroes or how life is pushing them toward some big moment.

Eastwood played with narrative structure with Sully and American Sniper, and he seems to want that to be his thing now. It's so awkward here, and combined with all the other embarrassing sequences and bits of terrible dialogue and cliches, it shows that Eastwood probably needs to retire and just concentrate on talking to chairs.

OK, that was a little mean. He shouldn't retire, I guess. Sully wasn't awful. It might have been if the real Sully had played the lead instead of Tom Hanks though.