Real life hero’s to real life actors. 15:17 To Paris Review
Clint Eastwood is back in the director’s chair for this unique retelling of the attempted 2015 Thalys terrorist train attack. Eastwood certainly goes a different direction when it came to cast selection for this movie as we have no big name actors taking the lead roles here, instead we see the actual real life stars of that day playing themselves. Spencer Stone, Anthony Sadler and Alek Skarlatos are the three American soldiers who boarded the 15:17 train from Amsterdam Central station to Paris on the 21st of August 2015 and became heroes.
The Movie starts off by showing us some of the events of that day before flashing back at different intervals to focus on the individual back stories of the soldiers. Bringing us closer to the events we see some of the guys exploits during their back packing holiday around Europe which of course is what lead them to being on the train in the first place.
The acting here was never going to be award winning and that can be forgiving as not many would be expecting Oscar winning performances from these newbies to the acting world. The trade-off seems worth it thought as what we are left with is what feels like a really detailed and accurate retelling of this story. The actual event itself only lasted 5 minutes so of course the story was going to need lots of padding and that’s where the back stories came in. Unfortunately these back stories were very weak which is a takes from the movie a lot but never the less doesn’t stop it still being a story that deserved to be told.
By Bill Tubbritt
Rating 2.5/5
