Who’s the hero? Not Eastwood
IN HIS latest film, Clint Eastwood has taken his famously no-frills film-making further than ever. Having dispensed with many of the accoutrements typical of Hollywood film-making – lengthy development, a battery of takes, any hand-wringing – he has, with little anguish, jettisoned actors too. Who needs ’em, anyway?
There are numerous professional actors in The 15:17 to Paris, about the foiled terrorist attack on a 2015 Paris-bound train, but the central characters are played by those who were genuinely caught up.
The movie, simple and straightforward, derives most of its appeal from its verisimilitude. But it’s not the quality of the acting that limits Eastwood’s film. It’s a threadbare script that fails to find much of a story to tell behind the headlines about how Oregon national guardsman Alek Skarlatos, US Air Force airman first class Spencer Stone and their friend Anthony Sadler, a college student, tackled and subdued an assailant armed with an AK-47 and nearly 300 rounds of ammunition.
The 15:17 to Paris follows Eastwood’s Sully, which also told a story of a regular man turned international hero. In the overly morose tale of Captain Chesley Sullenberger’s 2009 Hudson River landing, Eastwood focused on the strain of an unwanted spotlight. Here, he gladly shines it on Skarlatos, Stone and Sadler, all of whom look thrilled to be in an Eastwood movie.
It’s not the first such effort. There was Harold Russell’s Oscarwinning World War II veteran in William Wyler’s The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), the decorated Audie Murphy in 1955’s To Hell and Back and, more recently,
2012’s Act of Valor, with active duty Navy Seals.
Skarlatos and Stone aren’t elite forces, though, just regular guys who want to serve their country. Much of the movie recounts their childhood (the three became friends in school), early aspirations of joining the military and disappointment at not quickly finding distinction in the ranks.
The film is a brief ride at 94 minutes but meanders with narrative gaps and a missing sense of purpose.
Eastwood feels less engaged with the material, content to settle for merely recreating a patriotic outliner. By focusing solely on the three pals, he has slighted the story of Mark Moogalian, a 51-year-old American-born Frenchman and professor at the Sorbonne who was one of the first to battle the gunman. – AP