This post has a lot of movie spoilers
I saw The 15:17 to Paris last night and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it because it was the worst movies I’ve seen in a very long time. And not even the type of bad movie that you can laugh away. Truly awful.
What these three young men did to save lives is incredibly heroic, and somehow Clint Eastwood managed to sour people’s lasting memory of the brave things these young men did with a really bad film.
Here are a few of the lowlights:
- The movie is incredibly poorly written, which is kind of remarkable considering the movie was based on a true story. Ruining the retelling of events that actually transpired with bad writing is quite the feat.
- If you were offended by plot holes in The Last Jedi, this film will have you considering whether or not you should go to the movies ever again. At one point two of the friends met a fellow traveler, Lisa, from Los Angeles. They immediately became friends and got gelato and took selfies together. Then Lisa disappeared. That’s all.
- Stone worked at Jamba Juice and once gave a free smoothie to a Marine, so that’s how you know he loves the military. That, and he played airsoft with his two best friends growing up.
- Both Stone and Alek have the ability to teleport as far as I can tell. They go from U.S. military bases to Portugal and Afghanistan, respectively, without ever boarding an airplane.
- Alek is in Afghanistan and forgets his backpack in another city. So his group has to go back to the previous city to get his backpack. The backpack has no significance of any kind, and nothing eventful happens in either city. Oh, except for a villager stole Alek’s hat. The hat also had no significance.
- Alek meets a girl he used to work with in Germany and they have one beer together and then she disappears too. I’m worried about where all of these women ended up.
- The acting is bad. Like, Junior High Musical bad. And it’s not really the “actor’s” fault. Eastwood decided the actual heroes should play themselves, so they had no experience of any kind. Terrible mistake.
- Leonardo DiCaprio, Jack Nicholson, and Al Pacino couldn’t have made up for the holes in the script. The worst acting I’ve seen in any feature film in my life wasn’t the worst part of the movie.
I guess Eastwood was going for authentic(?), but dude straight up forgot to tell a story. It was like the equivalent of sitting through a family vacation slideshow of a total stranger’s family. And then at the end there’s a whole bunch of blood to make it clear that these guys risked their lives.
Maybe a documentary could have been a better angle here? Or not having these guys play themselves? Or rewriting the script entirely and starting over? Lots of possibilities
The scene on the train that they show over and over again in the trailer makes up roughly 20 minutes of a 94 minute film. All 94 minutes easily could have been spent on the train. Liam Neeson did it just last week!
Bottom line, these young guys really did perform some heroics on a train in France. I encourage you to read about their story. It’s amazing, and unfortunately this film does it almost no justice.
Please do not spend any money seeing this film. I’ve been through enough for all of us.
I think I’m done now.
Have you seen it yet? What’d you think?