During the flight for holiday with my wife, as usual I would be watching the movies on the inflight entertainment. Since the plane had to transit first before proceeding to the final destination and the duration for the first flight was less than 2 hours, I had to choose a movie short enough to finish before we reached the transit airport. Of course I could always continue in the second flight, but I would rather finish it once rather than stopping then continuing. So I opted to see this movie that fit those criteria. OK we shall move on with the movie now.
Brief Story Line
Spencer (Spencer Stone), Alex (Alex Skarlatos) and Anthony (Anthony Sadler) were 3 best friends since childhood. When they have grown up a bit, Spencer enlisted in the Air Force while Alex was in the US armies and was stationed in Afghanistan. Anthony was the only one who went to college. The three of them planned to go backpacking across Europe while they were on holiday.
Their first few days were spent in Germany, then in Holland. Until they decided it was time to leave for Paris. They bought the tickets for 15:17 train from Amsterdam to Paris. During this trip, there was a terrorist who planned an attack on the train.
So what would happen to the terrorist attack and the people on the train? Find them all in this quite powerful drama movie.
End of Brief Story Line
When I read the brief synopsis of the movie, I honestly thought it would be a full action, thrilling and suspenseful movie. But after completing the whole movie, it turned out to be totally different. This was a drama movie and not a lot of actions at all. Although the drama was quite powerful, but because I already expected something completely the opposite, I could not help but feel a bit disappointed.
The movie focused a lot on the 3 main characters' development from their childhood until their adult moment which culminated to the terrorist attack story that took only about probably 15-20 minutes. Not that we were not interested in these 3 guys story, but because the synopsis kind of hinted on the action part which I looked forward to, it was no surprise that I felt a bit bored. Not to mention the acting did not feel natural and felt like clear acting (which I found out later the reason was they were played by the real people themselves).
I am not sure the reason why the director Clint Eastwood (who actually was very good in directing powerful multiple nominated dramas such as Mystic River, Million Dollar Baby or American Sniper) opted to use the real Spencer, Alex and Anthony rather than having experienced actors playing their characters. When I read more about this movie on the internet, I realized that this was more like a biography of the 3 of them. Which explained why the story focused on their story from childhood, rather than focusing on the action part.
Other than these 3 young men, there were also other people playing as themselves such as Mark Moogalian and his wife Isabelle and Chris Norman. There were also more established actresses such as Judy Greer (Ant-man, Carrie etc) as Joyce, Spencer's mother and Jenna Fischer (Blades of Glory, The Office TV series etc) as Heidi, Alex's mother. These two were obviously the best performers in this movie.
Anyway, if you are looking for a terrorist attack full action movie, then you would definitely not find them in here. However, if you want to see a true story biographical movie about 3 young men who became heroes, then this would certainly be to your liking. You can watch this one during the inflight entertainment in Singapore Airlines or wait till the movie play on cable TV, or see it through online streaming.
Mike's movie moments rating: 3 out of 5 stars
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