Filmmakers hiring real-life subjects to portray themselves is not new.  Sports figures such as boxer Muhammad Ali (The Greatest, 1977), daredevil Evel Knievel (Viva Knievel!, 1977), baseball players Jackie Robinson (The Jackie Robinson Story, 1950) and Babe Ruth (in several silents and shorts, plus The Pride of the Yankees, 1942) and race car driver Richard Petty (43: The Petty Story, 1972) are just some of the famous folks to portray themselves in feature films.  But I can’t recall another instance of a filmmaker utilizing three real people to recreate the real event for which they became famous.  That is what occurs in The 15:17 to Paris.

Clint Eastwood’s film follows three friends as they embark on a trip across Europe.  They are Spencer Stone, Alek Skarlatos and Anthony Sadler, friends since childhood.  Much of the story, in fact, depicts them as kids, developing their friendship while coping with the burdens of adolescence.  But then they take that specific trip to Paris, and end up foiling a terrorist’s attack upon the train.  That event made headlines around the world, and now is forever immortalized in a Hollywood movie.

It’s an odd film, partly because these are just regular guys not pretending to be anyone other than themselves.  The script posits that fate put them on that train to intervene, offering a religious subtext as proof positive; it’s up to viewers to believe, or not.  But the script is also hopelessly mundane, full of “I don’t know, man” dialogue and a lack of meaningful characters (other than two mothers, played by Judy Greer and Jenna Fischer).  It seems underdeveloped and incomplete.

What these men did was incredibly heroic and extraordinary; the film that chronicles their heroism is more prosaic than special.  The editing, which takes us back and forth from the train to the men’s childhoods to their journey around Europe, keeps things interesting, but we never really get to know the men — especially Skarlatos and Sadler.  The film particularly spotlights Stone, who was injured during the terrorist takedown, and that sequence is tense and dramatic.  Yet the film, for the most part, is rather flat and even dull until the action kicks into gear.  It’s kind of a shame, considering the heroism these men provided.  ☆ ☆.  9 March 2018.