"I had this great sense of pride. That was a great event they pulled off," Eastwood recalls of Alek Skarlatos, Spencer Stone and Anthony Sadler, who stopped attacker Ayoub El-Khazzani. "This guy had an AK-47 and somewhere between 250 and 300 rounds of ammunition, pistols and knives. He could've killed 300 people, easy.
"I thought, 'I'd like to meet these guys,' " he adds.
4 comments:
I saw a preview for this movie last week when I went to see Shape of Water and I was blown away when I found out the real heroes of this story were actually starring in the dramatic retelling of it. I think the acting in the preview was a little cheesy dialogue-wise when they’re just hanging around, but when it switched over to them on the train, you could tell that they had been there before and the intensity reflected the situation pretty appropriately from what I could tell. I’m also not usually one for war movies or political movies involving terrorism or things like that, but I have a feeling this one is going to be more of a biopic piece with an epic fight in it and maybe one of those cool looks into the future now that they know what these guys are up to today.
Clint Eastwood is a great director that is known for his iconic movies, and I have no doubt that a lot of people would be willing to watch The 15:17 to Paris just because of the name and its association with Clint Eastwood. The article worries me a little bit when they quote Eastwood as saying “Besides, everybody knocks out a flop every now and then,” because it gives me the feeling that Eastwood is not even that sure of the movie he’s directing. The choice to create a movie using true survivors from the attack is a rough one because sometimes it’s better portrayed by actors, sometimes real people don’t want to remember the horrible incident over and over again, and sometimes true stories like these like to portray one person as a hero, or in this case, three heros, which may not have been the whole story.
While I am not the biggest fan of Clint Eastwood as a person, and have never felt particularly to any of the films that he has directed in the past, I do think he made a really interesting choice in casting the real life people that the event that is being re-told happened to in the actual film. When I saw a trailer for this movie a couple of months ago, I was shocked that these two guys would ever say yes to working on a project like this in the capacity that they are working on it in. I think that if I was in their shoes, I would not really be able to go back to the place that I had been in during that real life incident. I will be very interested to watch this movie when it comes out, and really watch for the difference between an actor's retelling and the retelling of a story by the people that it happened to, even when those people are not actors.
I actually went to the movies to see The 15:17 to Paris this past weekend. I’ve always loved movies that have this sort of cache to a greater purpose. Clint Eastwood’s film reminded me of Boyhood. While there were points within the movie that I found difficult to not cringe at the poorly written script, the last twenty minutes were powerful. It felt very real, watching the “actors” who had actually experienced this event, replay the event for the camera. I watch proud American heros show us what they felt was their life’s purpose. The last twenty minutes of this movie were dynamic, heart throbbing, and made me proud to be an American. However, there was no build up, no tension to help establish this life changing event. I understand the need to give backstory about these American heroes, however, I wonder if a different screenwriter or a more condensed timeline would have assisted in making this incredible story more dynamic, like Argo was. While I understand that I am requesting for a movie to stretch the truth, I just found that there was no reason for me to sit through the first 100 minutes if they weren’t a real influence on the last 20 minutes.
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