THE
15:17 TO PARIS
2018, PG-13, 94 mins. Alek Skarlatos as Alek Skarlatos / Anthony Sadler as Anthony Sadler / Spencer Stone as Airman Spencer Stone / Ray Corasani as Ayoub El-Khazzani / Jenna Fischer as Heidi Skarlatos / Judy Greer as Joyce Eskel / Jaleel White as Garrett Walden Directed by Clint Eastwood / Written by Dorothy Blyskal, based on the book by Anthony Sadler, Alek Skarlatos, Spencer Stone, and Jeffrey E. Stern |
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That's ultimately
telling and sad, seeing that I had no idea that an 87-year-old industry
veteran that has directed films for a better part of five decades was
capable of making something as soul crushingly dull and frequently
amateurish such as this. What's even more
shameful is that THE 15:17 TO PARIS is a most noble minded endeavor that
tries to chronicle a very recent real life story of heroism.
It reminds us that during moments of indescribable adversity that
everyday people are capable of remarkable gallantry.
One of the main issues with this film, though, is that Eastwood
makes the cardinal blunder of not casting actors, but the actual real life
heroes to play themselves, which often sticks out throughout the film like
a proverbial sore thumb. That,
and THE 15:17 TO PARIS' whole build up to its moment in question is so
clumsily executed and aimlessly written that, at just a scant 90-plus
minutes, the resulting film feels like it's three times longer than it is.
I've never checked my watch and audibly sighed more during a
Eastwood film than I did with this one; its opening two thirds it's like a
cure for insomnia.
But what of the
heroic event, you may ask? Well,
that moment in the film does work, but it happens so fleetingly and only
occupies roughly ten minutes of the entire running time, leaving Eastwood
and company mightily struggling to find ways to fill in the gaps and make
a would-be compelling narrative building up to it.
Here's what you need to know: Back in August of 2015 a terrorist on
board a Paris bound train smuggled on an assault riffle and other weapons
and threatened the lives of all passengers.
Three traveling American men in their twenties - Airman First Class
Spencer Stone, Oregon National Guardsman Alek Skarlatos, and college
student Anthony Sadler (all friends since childhood) - subdued and stopped
the Moroccan for murdering everyone.
A few other would-be heroes tried to wrestle the assailant down,
with one unfortunately being shot in the neck with a pistol.
Stone managed to tackle the terrorist and put him to sleep with a
choke hold, but was severely lacerated by the assailant repeatedly
stabbing at him with a knife. Eventually,
Stone's two BFFs - as well as a 62-year-old British businessman living in
France - managed to beat the terrorist down into unconsciousness.
The four men were deemed heroes by the international community and
were all granted the Legion of Honor, France's highest decoration. Now, this story
is indeed astounding and should have been a relative win-win for Eastwood,
seeing as he previously made another reality based film steeped in the
courageous actions of an ordinary citizen in SULLY.
Imagine, though, how that film would have been like without, say,
Tom Hanks quarterbacking it and instead having Eastwood employ the real
Chesley Sullenberger in re-telling 2009's Miracle on the Hudson.
I hope this illustrates just how precisely wrongheaded it was to
cast Stone, Sadler, and Skarlatos as themselves.
Yes, they have no formal acting training - which, as mentioned, is
painfully evident - and the dramatic phoniness that permeates
the film as a direct result is hard to shake.
THE 15:17 TO PARIS is hardly
the first film to use non-actors and/or non-actors playing themselves in
their own story (see ACT OF VALOR),
and I certainly understand Eastwood's basic motive here to aim for as much
verisimilitude as possible. Yet,
with horrendously wooden line readings, a lack of dramatic urgency, and a
weird and ironic lack of on-screen chemistry, the presence of the three
men here is something that becomes increasingly hard to take as the film
progresses. Simply put, it's
a creative stunt that simply doesn't pay off. I'm not trying to
pinpoint these poor souls as the main source of blame for the glaring
issues that I had with THE 15:17 TO PARIS; it's not their fault they can't
act. No, it represents a
startling inability on Eastwood's part to craft some semblance of a cinema
verite in the proceedings. The
movie is on very shaky ground right from the beginning stages without the
three men as we're dealt with an rather odd flashback structure (strangely
interweaved throughout the plot) that shows the trio growing up together
as children attending a staunchly religious Christian school.
The boys, as boys oftentimes do, get into frequent trouble with
teachers and the principal, which culminates in a bizarre and almost
unwatchable scene featuring Jenna Fischer and Judy Greer appearing as
Skarlatos and Stone's respective mothers.
A stern teacher informs them that Stone may have ADHD while
callously spiting them both as single mothers without purpose.
Realizing that she's not getting through to them, the disgruntled
teacher tries to relay stats to the mothers, which leads to one of them -
as they angrily walk out on her - lashing back "My God is bigger than
your statistics." It's
one of the most cringe worthy scenes that I've seen in quite some time. The film's off-putting
lethargy doesn't end there. God
and spirituality, initially at least, seems like important components to
the story, and the boys pray here and there and the mothers bring up the
almighty from time to time, but Eastwood seems reticent to follow through
on the film's Christian leanings. That,
and when the story flashes forward to the present and we see the adult
Skarlatos appear on screen with his mother in Fisher there's virtually no
attempt whatsoever to age her to make her physically appear like his
actual mother. Fisher seems
credible playing his mother when he was 12 in flashbacks, but watching her
exchange dialogue with Skarlatos looking as young as she did in previous
scenes is beyond laughable. Perhaps
the worst sections of THE 15:17 TO PARIS involves the trio of adult
friends backpacking through Europe and showing them doing things of the
most mundane, like ordering gelato, talking multiple selfies, meeting a
cute fellow tourist that serves as their guide in Germany (whom then
disappears without notice, never to be heard from again), and getting
hammered in parties during their journeys from Rome and Venice and to
Berlin and Amsterdam. Watching
this eye rollingly tedious middle section of the film makes THE 15:17 TO
PARIS look like it was directed by Tommy Wiseau: the staging, camera
setups, and editing is shockingly pedestrian.
I'd
love to tell you all that Eastwood redeems his film with his fairly
intense and well orchestrated recreation of the All-American boys stopping
that terrorist (it's undeniably gripping), but it occupies so little of
THE 15:17 TO PARIS that it utterly fails to makes us forget about all of
the aforementioned creative indiscretions.
Make no mistake about it: Stone, Skarlatos, and Sadler were
unfathomably brave on board that train and the way they selflessly hurtled
themselves into an extremely dangerous set of circumstances that could
have led to their deaths is worthy of exploration in film...and should be
celebrated.
Having said that, it makes THE 15:17 TO PARIS all the more
unendurable to sit through.
I felt bad for the men here.
They deserve better.
Maybe Eastwood should have opted for a TOUCHING
THE VOID treatment here, with the real life subjects reflecting
about their incident in interview segments that's interspersed with
recreations of the event with them.
Now that could have been special and made for a thoroughly
absorbing documentary.
Instead, THE 15:17 TO PARIS - while in an honest effort to pay
tribute to heroes - feels like an messy and expensive series of home
videos about the heroes.
Eastwood is unquestionably one of our greatest living directors,
but I never thought he was capable of making a movie this unforgivably
awful. |
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