The plot: On an afternoon train from Amsterdam to Paris,
U.S. soldiers Spencer Stone, Anthony Sadler and Alek Skarlatos, along with their
best friend Anthony Sadler, encounter a terrorist ready to kill everyone
on-board. As they get ready to take him down, Spencer recollects what led him
to this moment, from his school days to his military training to the brief
instances before this very moment that would make him and his friends into
heroes.
It feels kind of silly doing my usual acting
breakdown for this one because this is a bit of a unique situation. For our
main three characters, we don’t have actors; we have the actual people from the real-life story playing themselves. This is
a casting technique that is hardly new in the realms of cinema, but certainly
one we haven’t seen in something this mainstream for quite a while. Looking at
them in action, it becomes apparent why that might be. Not to say that they’re
bad on-screen, as they bring a definite grounding to the story, but they feel
insanely conspicuous next to the actual actors in the cast. Hell, this
disconnect exists between the real-life heroes and the child actors portraying
their younger selves (William Jennings, Bryce Gheisar and Paul-Mikél Williams
respectively). It’s too clear that our three leads and the rest of the cast are
working from different playbooks, and because of that, this attempt at realism
only ends up pulling the audience out of the action. Well, once they bother to
even get to the action, that is.
I don’t think I’ve ever done this before but I
need to do an act-by-act breakdown of the story, because not only are the three
we have here quite distinct, they also show varying different ways that Clint
Eastwood could apparently balls up this entire idea. Starting out, we are
thrown into a seriously jumbled timeline, cutting back and forth between the
school years, the adult years and the events that took place on the titular
train. This method only presents itself within the first act, and is rather
noticeably absent afterwards, making this preamble feel like a very sloppy
first edit rather than a completed production. This isn’t helped by the barrage
of juicy bits of dialogue that, in no time whatsoever, gave an immediate sense
that something was very wrong here. It’s quote time!
So, the mothers of Spencer and Alek (played by Judy Greer
and Jenna Fischer respectively) are told by their sons’ teacher that the kids
may have ADD. Spencer’s mom responds with “So, you want us to drug our kids to
make your job easier?”. When the teacher tries to explain the statistics around
ADD diagnoses, Spencer’s mom storms out after saying “My god is bigger than your
statistics”. Both of these lines are said straight and supposed to get the
audience on-side with the person saying them. I should mention at this point
that, around the time these pearls were uttered, my medication alarm went off
for my Seroquel. You can probably guess that I’m not too fond of this exchange
and its connotations, and somehow, it only gets worse from there.
Maybe this is because I don’t live in America, but seeing
young Spencer and his friends playing with a veritable arsenal of BB guns,
complete with a real-as-fuck hunting rifle, is kind of troubling. Then again, all
of this is just a showcasing of Eastwood’s own politics: Military good, gun
ownership good, liberals need to stop whinging. As much as I would love to take
all those ideas to task, I can at least see why they’re here. It’s supposed to
show these soon-to-be-heroes as the underdogs, the ones who no-one thought
would amount to anything, with a shared interest in military tactics to set up
their narrative future. With that lens, these things become slightly more appealing, but that
goodwill eventually drains away during the second act.
Knowing how easily the casting idea for our leads could have
just devolved into gimmickry, I don’t think it’s fair to be entirely cynical
about this. Well, I would have said
that, if it weren’t for the insane amount of waffling on that happens with this
middle section. It’s comprised mainly of Spencer going through military
training, with a bit of trial-and-error involved, and seeing him, Alek and Anthony
going backpacking through Europe. Part of me thinks that these guys agreed to
portray themselves here because it meant a free European vacation because
that’s about all these scenes ultimately serve. Outside of some occasionally
lecherous cinematography courtesy of Eastwood regular Tom Stern, all we are
shown here are three Americans farting around and taking selfies in front of
some European landmarks. Nothing is accomplished in this space, and it only
serves to kill whatever momentum had been built up from the start. The film
seems to be in no real rush to get anyway quickly, which would be fine if the
character interactions made the road trip worth taking. As good as the
chemistry between the main three is, this isn’t what we get. The closest to worthy
dialogue we get here is a few spare exchanges talking about destiny and how
Spencer is being pushed towards some higher purpose. Somehow, I doubt being in
this film qualifies.
And then we get to the titular event, where Spencer, Alek
and Anthony prevented a serious tragedy on a Paris-bound train. Considering
we’re dealing with not only a real-life story but also the real-life components
of that story, I want to make it clear that I am not casting dispersions on
what these men have done, both on and off-screen. What I do take issue with is the fact that, once we do get to the main
action, it’s over and done with in record time. It takes up a good ten minutes
of this hour-and-a-half feature and with how blandly it’s taken care of, it not
only makes the slog preceding it feel even more wasteful but it also undersells
the genuine heroism of the story. All the narrative pieces here are aiming for
setting up ordinary people on the path to an event that would show them as
heroes, but with this finale, we
certainly get the ‘ordinary people’ aspect but not the ‘heroes’ aspect. What
makes this bizarre is the fact that, at least once before, Clint Eastwood has
done this exact same idea to far greater effect. Sully, for instance, may have
had its plot hiccups but it still highlighted the courage and drive of the
ordinary human that would make them extraordinary. That film actually left me
inspired to do something good. All this does is make me want to make a better
movie out of the material myself; “if you want something done right…” and all
that.
All in all, this is a neatly-partitioned mixture of bad,
boring and too little, too late. The “acting” suffers from not going with
either all real people or all actors, making the interactions between the two
very distracting, the narrative structure feels like it was constructed by
someone with no idea how pacing or tension works, and the production at large
is definitely trying to be inspiring and detailing the exploits of real-life
heroes, but the end result would hardly inspire someone to give up sweets for a
day, let alone anything more substantial. And to add insult to injury, seeing
Clint Eastwood floundering this badly
to do something he had already done only a couple years ago makes even my
attempts to excuse his politicising in-film seem foolish. Maybe if this film
actually had some focus, or at least looked up the word in the dictionary, it
would be worth trying to salvage.
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