This film was a head scratcher for me. It was a novel concept - to tell a story of heroism casting the heroes to play themselves - but it just didn't work. Not that the heroes didn't bring good first time performances, their contributions were natural and convincing. But the story wasn't big enough to justify a full length feature treatment. So, what we got was: Part 1 - a looooooong first hour to establish basic character points (during this hour I repeatedly asked the questions, "Is this a Clint Eastwood production? Have I mistakenly gone into a low budget, single concept, student film?); Part 2 - A travelogue of Europe to establish the context (that erased the notion that it was low budget, those were lofty locations); then, Part 3 - the act of heroism, itself, worth telling, but it only takes a few harrowing minutes. So, not a documentary, not a movie. Perhaps, a short live action would have worked. Because, the kernel of this film is a story deserving to be told, I give it a 6 (fair) out of 10. But as a feature length movie I would give it a 4 (poor) out of 10. [Reenactment of a true act of heroism]

It's a cool idea to cast the real life heroes. It's a bad idea if you want to make a good movie. They obviously aren't trained actors so this movie being bad isn't all their fault. The script is terrible. The part in the middle school infuriated me, it made no sense why the teachers were that big of assholes. And Spencer just had a shotgun in his closet? Then going to the training part was ok but then the European trip part was pointless. Just watching them go around Europe wasn't entertaining. Clint Eastwood dropped the ball on this one and was trying to manipulate you into feeling something by using the real heroes.

Like a bad sermon, _The 15:17 to Paris_ is boring, pointless and irredeemable. The actions of the three Americans who sextuple handedly thwarted a terrorist attack in a train between Amsterdam and Paris deserve more than this slapdash travelogue carelessly thrown together by Clint Eastwood. Clint (who once called me a 'pussy'*) dishonours these men's bravery with a surprising and uncharacteristically amateurish production. The best way to pay tribute to these extraordinary heroes is not this film. *In an August 4, 2016 interview with Esquire magazine, Eastwood stated, "(S)ecretly everybody’s getting tired of political correctness, kissing up. That’s the kiss-ass generation we’re in right now. We’re really in a pussy generation. Everybody’s walking on eggshells. We see people accusing people of being racist and all kinds of stuff. When I grew up, those things weren’t called racist."

This be bad. 'The 15:17 to Paris' portrays an event from 2015. The decision by director Clint Eastwood to cast the real life people as themselves was, in my opinion, a poor call. I obviously have nothing against the guys, quite the opposite of course, but they simply cannot act. It's kinda painful watching them, I gotta be honest. I will say I didn't actually know that was the case before viewing, but I cottoned on fairly quickly whilst watching - especially as Eastwood did similar casting for 'Jersey Boys' four years prior. In terms of actual acting talent, Jenna Fischer and Judy Greer feature minorly. It isn't just the cast issues, though. The way the plot is set up didn't interest me, the scenes actually onboard the train are solid but that practically only makes up a quarter of the 94 minute run time - the rest is filler, as we see the main trio's lives up until the main event. That would've been fine if the acting was better, but that evidently wasn't the case. Respect to all involved, but as a film this falls very short.

Not sure if that was the best move of Spencer, if that gun would not have jammed up, he would have been shot and very likely died. 🤔