The 15:17 to Paris

As an extreme­ly pithy (and mov­ing) con­tex­tu­al tit­bit at the top end of Jaume Collet-Serra’s The Com­muter, we see an entire life of banal con­for­mi­ty com­pact­ed into a majes­tic, ellip­ti­cal over­ture. With each cut, time slides through a black hole, and it’s sad because it infers that hap­pi­ness is only pos­si­ble when cosy rou­tine is strict­ly main­tained. Ran­dom hap­pen­stance and unnec­es­sary dra­ma only bring tears. Cue a big ol’ ruckus on a sub­ur­ban pas­sen­ger train and Liam Nee­son crack­ing a bunch of skulls.

This new film by Clint East­wood is based on a real event in which a trio of back­pack­ing Amer­i­can bros, two of whom were in the mil­i­tary, foiled a poten­tial­ly gnarly (and then some) ter­ror­ist bul­let ram­page on a Thalys train trav­el­ling from Ams­ter­dam to Paris in the sum­mer of 2015. The episode itself plays as a short, vio­lent epi­logue which is por­ten­tous­ly teased through­out the film. The major­i­ty of the dra­ma focus­es on the crush­ing dis­ap­point­ment of pro­fes­sion­al sta­sis, the mun­dan­i­ty of mid­dle youth and the drab, almost seedy real­i­ties of mod­ern warfare.

Unlike Nee­son in the The Com­muter, the banal­i­ty offers no com­fort to these men – it makes them itchy and reck­less, espe­cial­ly as they begin to sus­pect their appetite for destruc­tion will nev­er be sat­ed. The film’s cen­tral char­ac­ter, Spencer Stone (play­ing him­self), grows up in a strict Chris­t­ian house­hold and has a poster of Stan­ley Kubrick’s Full Met­al Jack­et adorn­ing his bed­room wall. This vision of remorse­less mil­i­tary dis­ci­pline and abject (albeit char­ac­ter-build­ing) humil­i­a­tion he’s been weened on is quick­ly revealed to be a sham, and it seems to colour his awk­ward jour­ney through Air Force basic training.

In terms of broad themes, this is very much of a piece with Eastwood’s pre­vi­ous fea­ture, Sul­ly, in that it deals sen­si­tive­ly and philo­soph­i­cal­ly with the atten­dant trau­mas of hero­ism. In Sul­ly, the ​“mir­a­cle on the Hud­son” instant­ly offers the every­man pilot a sober­ing reminder that life hangs by a soft, silken thread. In The 15:17 to Paris, we see a gen­er­a­tion of aspi­rant Sullys all champ­ing at the bit to make some valu­able con­tri­bu­tion to soci­ety (sav­ing lives) and feel­ing like they’re final­ly being cat­a­pult­ed towards their own mag­nif­i­cent destiny.

The char­ac­ters all sin­cere­ly believe that the mean­ing of life will soon be revealed to them, and this is an idea they awk­ward­ly revert to in moments of qui­et con­tem­pla­tion. These numer­ous dec­la­ra­tions could be read as blunt-force movie dia­logue sign­post­ing, or per­haps a gen­uine encap­su­la­tion of how these men are able to make it through their long, dull days. In one strange sequence, Alek Skar­latos (play­ing him­self) is dropped off at an air­port en route to a tour of duty in Afghanistan, and his moth­er, in a flash of mad-eyed fer­vour, claims that God has shown her his path and that he is bound for glo­ry. He cheer­ful­ly accepts her words, yet they res­onate through­out a film about peo­ple liv­ing with a con­stant dri­ve towards some divine purpose.

Lat­er, dur­ing a live shoot­er alert on the Air Force cam­pus, Stone impul­sive­ly choses to flout the pro­to­col of cow­er­ing under a table. Armed only with a ball­point pen, he read­ies him­self to take down the assailant. As with a film like Amer­i­can Sniper, about the trag­ic life of Navy SEAL Chris Kyle, this is when East­wood care­ful­ly dis­tances him­self from the story’s polit­i­cal under­cur­rents. Stone’s desire for hero­ism has tak­en on absurd, dan­ger­ous dimen­sions. It’s evolved from whole­some dream to anti­so­cial com­pul­sion. His cat-like readi­ness for instant self sac­ri­fice depicts a dark­er, more destruc­tive side to the drug of being ele­vat­ed to the sta­tus of Christ-like saviour.

Per­haps the most beau­ti­ful aspect of this rich and rad­i­cal blue-col­lar opus is the man­ner in which East­wood deliv­ers an unshowy and rather hum­ble cel­e­bra­tion of the habits, moti­va­tions and desires of these sim­ple men. There’s a near­ly 30-minute sequence in the mid­dle of the film in which Stone and his child­hood play­mate, Antho­ny Sadler (again, play­ing him­self), decide to go inter­rail­ing through Europe.

They dart through an itin­er­ary of tourist mon­u­ments, immor­tal­is­ing each step with quick self­ie, each time flash­ing the same insin­cere smile. They don’t real­ly have any­thing deep to say to one anoth­er, or any real human con­nec­tion. They only about where they’ll go next – the future is their sole inter­est. It’s hard to think of a more unaf­fect­ed, hon­est and exis­ten­tial­ly poignant depic­tion of hol­i­day­ing youth out­side of the films of French mae­stro Eric Rohmer.

The choice to have the three leads play them­selves and, in essence, relive this ordeal for the mul­ti­plex mass­es, lends the film an edge of play­ful exper­i­men­ta­tion. While a work like Paul Green­grass’ Unit­ed 93 dan­ger­ous­ly runs with poet­ic licence to visu­alise a tragedy with­out the input of liv­ing wit­ness­es, here these men are essen­tial­ly in con­trol of what we see and how we see it. Stone’s per­for­mance in par­tic­u­lar boasts a puri­ty and sim­pli­fy that’s miss­ing from a lot of screen act­ing. His mod­est reac­tion to a bowl of gela­to while in Venice is par­tic­u­lar­ly touch­ing in its casu­al offhand­ed­ness. It actu­al­ly makes the con­ven­tion­al act­ing in the film feel a lit­tle out of place, mak­ing you won­der why East­wood stopped at cast­ing the real leads.

But the ques­tion of whether East­wood cast the men to chal­lenge the verac­i­ty of screen act­ing, to make a state­ment on the sub­tle divi­sions between fic­tion and real­i­ty, or just as a sen­ti­men­tal ges­ture to gift these heroes the ulti­mate money-can’t‑buy acco­lade (a movie about their exploits) is a tan­ta­lis­ing ques­tion which hangs over this fas­ci­nat­ing, mul­ti­di­men­sion­al work. The burst of cli­mat­ic vio­lence pen­e­trates hard and deep, and as the men receive the Legion of Hon­our from then-Pres­i­dent of François Hol­lande, their faces seem to say one thing: is that me done?