Review of The 15:17 to Paris (2018) by The D — 11 Feb 2018

As sad as it is to type this, I could only manage to give this movie 2 Icees (out of 5).  For anyone that doesn't know, this movie is not only based on actual events, but stars the heroes that actually performed the heroic act.  In addition, the director (Clint Eastwood) assembled many of the passengers from that trip for this movie (except the terrorist, of course).

So when I was getting ready to watch this movie, I only knew one of the heroes, from Dancing With The Stars. Although I was looking forward to this movie, I was concerned that these heroes would not be good actors.  Surprisingly, that wasn't the case.  Don't get me wrong, they aren't winning an Oscar anytime soon, but they were serviceable enough as actors to not bring the movie down.

So what did bring the movie down?  Two things.  First, this exciting event in their lives was the only thing in their lives (and the movie) that was interesting at all.  As the movie showed the trio as kids and then young adults they tried to drive interest by bringing in things like ADD, Christianity, successes and failures it utterly failed as none of that was interesting at all.  Least interesting was their trip through Europe until the events of that fateful day. The second thing? Those child actors were very, very, very bad. Not even close to being decent actors. Their acting was so bad it took away from the story they were trying to tell, which may have been a good thing since it was boring.

The bright spot of the movie? The events on the train. The trio and others on the train say that it was re-created perfectly. It is exciting and dangerous and very well-done.  Unfortunately, the rest of the movie couldn't live up to it.

There is a scene partway into the credits but no other scenes.

Enjoy...