The 15:17 to Paris (2018)
I don’t know if I was living under a rock at the time or what, but I don’t remember hearing about this on the news. The act in and of itself was incredibly brave and amazing, and I’m super glad no one was killed.
To be honest, I never had any intention of watching this film. No reason why. Just wasn’t on my radar. My mother-in-law was visiting, and she had heard it was good, so we rented it.
I think it’s amazing and fantastic that the real heroes had the opportunity to play themselves in the film. With that being said, I knew they weren’t actors, so I wasn’t expecting much in their performances. They are real people with a story to tell, and they had the platform to do that.
Having them play themselves was both a good and bad thing. The good is above, and the bad is that there isn’t much tension in the film. We know that they come out of the ordeal alive. Of course, we would know that through history and knowing the real story also, so this didn’t really give anything away.
The event on the train happened in a relatively short amount of time, yet the film needed to be 90 minutes long. This allowed for Eastwood to delve into the heroes’ history and give us insight into their childhoods and how they were shaped into the men they became. This was fine, but the film felt incredibly long and slow. We kept waiting for the exciting part, the train event, and it felt like it took a long time to show up and was over way too quickly.
While the story is incredibly fascinating, I think a different format would have made it more appealing. I know there’s a book based on the event, and maybe it’s more exciting in novel form. I haven’t read it, so I don’t know. The film just felt dry.
At the end of the day, I learned about these amazing heroes and what they did on a train heading to Paris. It wasn’t the best film I’ve ever seen, but it wasn’t the worst either.
Has anyone else seen this film? What did you think?
