Clearly, it's not appropriate to begin this review by criticising the three main actors who were indeed the real participants. So credit to them in the first place for doing what they did and also to Clint Eastwood for this new daring act of cinematic bravery. Sadly, the idea fails quite miserably and all involved should be held responsible. However, you would expect more from Eastwood. So the movie, as I see it, is in three acts and hopefully you don't regard my basic description of these acts as spoilers. If so, I apologise. Act One features the childhood of the heroes. The beginning offers a few enticing moments that we hope will give us some insight into the characters. Unfortunately, it doesn't much, falling flat and rapidly descending into cliched depictions of youngsters with burning dreams. It's nice to see Pam from 'The Office' pop up and do a decent job as one of the mothers but, with Eastwood appearing to keep to the truth with noble intentions, it nevertheless fails to develop and therefore feels empty. The appearance of a 'Full Metal Jacket' poster in one of the boy's bedrooms offers a little window into the thematics that the Second Act wished to partake in. That is to say, it introduces the theme of the training and maturation of the three heroes, heavily weighted in favour of the character of Spencer Stone. Again, the blunt reality of an honest story fails to entertain as a film and even Stone's determination to join the military feels almost irrelevant. Eastwood's stoic refusal to 'make stuff up for an audience' is admirable but so dull that it begins to feel like a made-for-TV documentary. And then, towards the end of this Act, it becomes little more than watching someone else's holiday snaps. I desperately wanted to fast-forward this part but, being on-board a United Airlines flight at the time, I've always found the touch-screen controls too fiddly. The Third Act is the act of terrorism itself which is featured in flashback form in the earlier acts. There are no surprises and no twists...because life generally doesn't do that. Contrived, it ain't, but nor is it remotely entertaining. Read about this event in the newspaper instead and salute the heroes involved but don't embarrass them by trying to make them into actors. To this end, I hate criticising the film but it's got to be done.

The 15:17 to Paris is a drama thriller film directed by Clint Eastwood. Based on the real life Amsterdam to Paris train attack of 2015, it pays a nice amount of respect to the actual heroes involved but does not translate on screen as well as it could have.After backpacking across Europe for an extended period of time, childhood friends Spencer Stone, Anthony Sadler, and Alek Skarlatos (all played by themselves) decide to finish their vacation by catching the 15:17 train from Amsterdam to Paris. While onboard the train, the three friends spot a terrorist attempting to attack the passengers with an assault rifle. Putting their military knowledge to the test, the three of them leap to the aid of the passengers in an attempt to subdue the gunman.There's no denying the film's good intentions but unfortunately, most of them fall flat. The decision to cast the three real life heroic individuals as themselves was an interesting experiment that clearly did not work out and ended up working to the film's disadvantage. While none of the three were terrible by any means, neither of them have any acting charisma or screen presence to hold one's attention during the film's important expositional scenes. In addition to this, the actual event only took place in a matter of minutes, so there are often obvious scenes of padding to make the film longer. I feel that this story of heroism would have worked much better as a 45 minute made-for-TV docudrama rather than a feature length film.I rate it 5/10

This movie was horrendous, I couldn't even make it 30 minutes. Horrible acting and boring as hell. I respect the story and the men involved but it was awful

There's a reason acting is a profession. Between the lack of writing and the "acting"; it was just painful.Huge Eastwood fan, service member, knew the story pretty well and was excited to see it was still just terrible. Made "Act of Valor" look like Star Wars.