The 15:17 to Paris - Review Thread

A popular screenwriting podcast that I listen to, Script Notes, often times has segments where they pull up current events, true stories, or uncovered history and try to decipher if it would be made into a movie or not.  Funny enough, many of the stories that they cover have gone on to become feature films on various levels.  It's an interesting exercise, because even though every story they delve into is interesting in its own right, the question ultimately is whether or not it has enough meat on its bones to be made into a feature length film.  The latest to receive this treatment surrounds the events of 2015 where three American friends prevented a potential massacre onboard a train bound for Paris.  The three, Spencer Stone, Anthony Sadler, and Alek Skarlatos, were rightfully praised as heroes by both the French and American media, and Sadler wrote the book that this film derived from.  This is a wonderful story of bravery, heroism, and good people triumphing over a hateful individual.  The problem though is that director Clint Eastwood and screenwriter Dorothy Blyskal are on autopilot in regards to fleshing out any intrigue in this already succinct story, and the film isn't so much a bad film as it's an incredibly dull one.  Eastwood's direction is nowhere to be seen here, a troubling realization considering the bold move by him to cast the heroes to play themselves in the film, and believe me when I say that these men are heroes but certainly not actors.  The friends are hung out to dry also by Blyskal's plodding screenplay, which attempts to pad the event on the train with a brigade of trivial backstories and parallels all of which is carried out with some of the most stilted dialogue I've heard in a studio-released film.  If this story had come on Script Notes (maybe it did, haven't listen to every episode), I find it hard to believe they'd tell Eastwood that there was enough material here to make a movie.

The film begins with the three heroes as children and chronicles their friendship and the difficulties they're facing in school.  They're bullied by peers, deemed disruptive by their teachers and principal, and can't seem to fit in with anyone but each other.  There's a large portion of the film dedicated to this stage of their lives, and to be honest it's where it's most apparent that the script is grasping for any story that it can.  I agree that it's important to show them becoming friends, and when they all drift apart as kids and yet stay great friends into becoming adults is compelling material as well, but none of it really feels like it carries any real weight dramatically.  Later the heroes play themselves, still going in different paths yet remaining close friends.  Spencer and Alek are in different branches of the military, while Anthony is a student in Sacramento.  While the film does feature all three of them, Spencer Stone is certainly the main focus and does carry the most interesting storyline as well.  Stone works towards becoming a member of an exclusive paratrooper force in the Air Force, but is unable to join it because of his depth perception and, crushed, must report for training for a position he doesn't want.  The training initially doesn't go well for Stone, who draws the ire of his commanding officer for being tardy and not executing his tasks correctly.  For the most part though, this doesn't go anywhere beyond Stone's initial disappointment in not getting into the program, and is yet another example of Blyskal presenting the potential for interesting backstory and squandering it.  After some painfully dry dialogue between the three friends over Skype, they agree to travel to Europe.  These scenes are a disappointment as well.  There's some mildly amusing sightseeing around European cities between Spencer and Anthony, but it's mostly just a lot of dull meandering to local sights without any real hijinks or fun or drama or anything really.  I'm all for the filmmakers striving for a realistic portrayal of these three and their story, but the scenes they've put together before the train attack are simply not "movie worthy".  They're not advancing anything.  It's painfully clear that the whole movie is just an exercise in padding running time before they can get to the climactic scene, but to make matters worse the train sequence really isn't worth the journey either. The sequence is also stretched to its capacity, but even then it's clear that, while an amazing real life story, there's not enough here to justify a feature film.  The real tension of the shooter being loose is over almost as fast as it begins, and the reward for sitting through the continuous monotony of the entire film is certainly less than worthy.

Blyskal's screenplay is a tiresome blend of bad dialogue and dull scenarios that certainly don't help anyone else involved, but I'm most disappointed with Eastwood here.  I'm all for him casting the three heroes to play themselves; it's an interesting experiment and one that I think could've worked, at least a lot better than it did, if the writing were better and if Eastwood had directed the film with the ability we know he has.  Then again, this technique had middling results when he tried it with the Hmong community in Gran Torino, so maybe it's not an experiment worth attempting.  It's just so painfully obvious that the direction for the film simply isn't there.  Eastwood could've shaken up the dialogue, guided them through improving some more interesting conversations that they would have with each other.  He could have devised more interesting scenarios in Europe, if not bigger drama then at least more interesting looks at the culture and people of the cities the guys are visiting to make their meandering through Europe at least amusing.  It's all a shame, because the three heroes are highly likable and are clearly trying their best.  Stone is easily the best among the three, and he gives Eastwood all he's got, but sadly the three of them are let down by the elements three non-actors needed the most to succeed: a solid script and some direction.  Blyskal and Eastwood let them down, simple as that.  The three heroes deserved better, as did their story.  It might not have been a great idea to make the wonderful story into a film anyways, as it's painfully obvious that the filmmakers have squeezed everything they could from their protagonists, but it still should have amounted to more than what we're given.  The 15:17 to Paris is a rare film that isn't so much bad because it's an awful movie, but bad because it's immensely disappointing in its portrayal of its leads and ploddingly dull as it takes a ten minute film and stretches it out to a feature length one.  Despite the rotten score, I didn't hate the movie, but I seriously questioned its point and the dedication of the people who made it, and that's almost just as bad.

4/10