Rating summary

Movie		1.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.5
Overall		2.0

The 15:17 to Paris Blu-ray Movie Review

Late Arrival

Reviewed by Michael Reuben May 21, 2018

No one has ever had a film career like Clint Eastwood's. He's been a screen star, a worldwide icon, a successful producer/director, and he has a shelf-load of awards that would be the envy of any filmmaker. With his 88th birthday fast approaching, Eastwood could kick back and spend every day on the golf course and every night collecting an honor for lifetime achievement. But the director's passion for new work appears to be undimmed, and he long ago reached the point where he's free to try anything he wants. The 15:17 to Paris is the third in a series of films in which Eastwood set out to explore the exploits of real-life heros—a conscious reaction, as he says in the extras, to the current predominance of superheroes on movie screens. American Sniper and Sully were both solid achievements (and box office sucesses), though not without their flaws. Now Eastwood has attempted to dramatize the resourceful bravery of three young Americans who, in 2015, prevented a potential terrorist massacre on a high-speed train bound from Amsterdam to Paris.

But lightning didn't strike a third time. 15:17 is a dud of a picture, and much of the blame has been laid on Eastwood's decision to cast the real-life heroes as themselves (a notion undoubtedly inspired, at least in part, by his use of some of the real-life participants in Sully). But blame doesn't lie with the first-time actors, who discharge their duties credibly and, as the director notes, have interesting faces that connect well with the camera. No, the problem lies with the script by first-time screenwriter Dorothy Blyskal, an assistant on Sully as well as other recent productions including Live by Night and The House. Blyskal's script teases a thriller, but it delivers something else, and the result is far less interesting than the story deserves. As producer and director, Eastwood bears the ultimate responsibility for not insisting on a complete overhaul before filming began.

Eastwood opens 15:17 with tight shots on the back pack and distinctive shoes worn by Ayoub El Khazzani (Ray Corasani) as he boards the titular train on August 21, 2015. It's a classic thriller introduction, providing clear visual identifiers for the villain and prompting anticipation about what's in that backpack and what its owner is going to do next. But then the movie abandons the train for over an hour, returning for occasional inserts that are just enough to remind you of what the film is supposed to be about. If the goal is to sustain any sense of dramatic tension, these quick flashes are woefully inadequate. Suspense quickly gives way to impatience.

Sully built 208 seconds of near-calamity into an effective ninety-minute drama by replaying the crisis of Flight 1549 repeatedly and from multiple perspectives. 15:17 might have adopted a similar strategy, but instead it does a bait-and-switch. Rather than the drama of the train's nearly disastrous journey promised by the opening shot (not to mention the title and the ad campaign), we get a combination of biography and travelogue, as we follow Spencer Stone, Anthony Sadler, and Alek Skarlatos from their boyhood friendship through the military careers of Stone and Skarlatos. Eventually we get to the travels in Europe that found the three friends riding the same train as El Khazzani, but before that we have to spend an inordinately long time taking in the sights of Venice, Rome and Amsterdam. The buddies are played by child actors as kids and by themselves as adults, and both groups establish an easy, natural rhythm, whether it's the boys repeatedly getting into trouble at school—their exasperated principal is nicely underplayed by Lethal Weapon's Thomas Lennon—or the young adults keeping in touch and catching up with each other's lives. Eastwood is clearly trying to reinforce the notion that these were just regular guys, and he shoots much of the film in a documentary style, with dialogue that sounds like we're eavesdropping on everyday conversations.

But most everyday conversations are boring, unless you happen to be part of them (and sometimes even then). 15:17 quickly goes slack, and you sit there waiting for the film to catch up with the events on the train that make the story worth telling in the first place. When the fateful confrontation finally arrives at around 1:11, it's intense and suspenseful, especially the desperate effort to save the life of passenger Mark Moogalian (also playing himself), who successfully wrenched an AK-47 from El Khazzani's hands and was shot in the back as he attempted to flee with it. If not for Stone's Air Force emergency medical training, Moogalian would have died.

15:17 concludes with the three newly minted heroes receiving France's Legion of Honour, along with Chris Norman (also playing himself), a British businessman who helped subdue El Khazzani. It's yet another shortcoming in Blyskal's script (and, to be fair, in Eastwood's direction) that the film fails to adequately identify Norman and underplays his participation in the events. When you see him standing next to the French president (Patrick Braoudé) receiving the same prestigious award as the three Americans, you're distracted from the solemnity of the occasion because you're wondering who that fourth guy is.

The 15:17 to Paris Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The 15:17 to Paris was shot by Tom Stern, who has been Eastwood's cinematographer since Blood Work. The film was captured digitally with Alexa and finished on a digital intermediate at 2K. Warner's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray features the video quality we have come to expect from such projects, with good sharpness and detail and an absence of noise, aliasing or other interference. The palette is naturalistic throughout and parts of the film would fit comfortably into a promotional video for European tourism. It's a satisfactory image, but it might look even better if Warner hadn't made the bizarre decision to use a BD-50, then waste most of the available space. The disc image is 25.5 GB, which leaves over 20 GB unused and results in an average bitrate of 23.59 Mbps. That's adequate, but other disc publishers—Sony and the Warner Archive Collection, to name two—have demonstrated that even digitally acquired material can look better at higher average rates. Even Warner's theatrical group has implicitly recognized the advantage of more generous compression with releases like Collateral Beauty and Father Figures. It's high past time such mastering practices became standard operating procedure.

The 15:17 to Paris Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The 15:17 to Paris has been equipped with a Dolby Atmos soundtrack that effectively achieves its modest intentions. The film doesn't have any "big" sound effects or standout set pieces. There's only one gunshot, and even the fight on the train occurs at realistic levels without the amped-up blows and punches that you would expect in an action film. The Atmos mixing provides a nice balance between the sounds of the action onboard and the roar of the train racing across the countryside—in real life, the latter would probably overwhelm the former—and it provides understated atmosphere to the film's various locales, both foreign and domestic. The dialogue is clearly rendered, and the gently understated piano score by Christian Jacob effectively apes Eastwood's composing style, just as Jacob did in Sully .

Note that once again Warner has included an utterly redundant DTS-HD MA 5.1 soundtrack and, once again, the disc defaults to that track rather than Atmos. Remember to select Atmos from the main menu.

The 15:17 to Paris Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• The 15:17 to Paris: Making Every Second Count (1080p; 1.78:1; 8:11): This featurette focuses on the making of the film, and while brief, it contains interesting details about the casting and the challenges of filming on a moving train.



• The 15:17 to Paris: Portrait of Courage (1080p; 1.78:1; 12:27): This featurette focuses on Sadler, Stone and Skarlatos and their experiences on August 21, 2015 and after.



• Introductory Trailer: The film's trailer is not included. At startup, the disc plays trailers for 12 Strong and Tomb Raider.

The 15:17 to Paris Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Give Eastwood & Co. credit for noble intentions, but The 15:17 to Paris fails to capture the dramatic urgency of ordinary guys rising to extraordinary circumstances that Sadler, Stone and Skarlatos deserve. Read their book instead.