The 15:17 To Paris

Front Row at the Movies by Shirrel Rhoades

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To call “15:17 to Paris” a biographical thriller is an understatement. In telling the true story of the three Americans who helped stop the 2015 Thalys train attack, director Clint Eastwood took it one step further: He cast the actual guys as leads in the movie.

Based on the book “The 15:17 to Paris: The True Story of a Terrorist, a Train, and Three American Soldiers,” the movie tells how Spencer Stone, Anthony Sadler and Alek Skarlatos, along with a Brit and two Frenchmen, stopped a gunman on a Paris-bound train.

While riding the train between Amsterdam and Brussels, the three childhood friends heard a gunshot and breaking glass. A train employee came racing down the aisle followed by a 25-year-old Moroccan man brandishing an AKM assault rifle.

Another passenger tackled the gunman, but failed to stop him. Stone grabbed the man but got stabbed in the neck and eyebrow and almost lost his thumb. Skarlatos seized the assailant’s rifle. Sadler and the Brit finished subduing the terrorist.

As a result, the guys were made Knights of the Legion of Honour; they also received various military medals and got invited to the White House.

“15:17 to Paris” is currently telling the story at Tropic Cinema.

Of late, Clint Eastwood’s filmmaking career has focused on American heroism – from “Sully” to “Flags of Our Fathers” to “American Sniper.” But rather than turning to Hollywood stars like Tom Hanks or Ryan Phillippe or Bradley Cooper for this project, he cast the real participants.

As Eastwood tells it, “I was looking through a lot of actors on tape, good actors too, and they would have done a good job, but I kept looking at the guys, I kept looking at their faces and going over this, and finally one day I said I think you could play yourself.”

Eastwood filmed his cast at the real places where the events occurred. “It’s not an intellectual art form, it’s an emotional art form,” he says. “And the reason that they did well was they were back in the same locations, with the same feel.”

What attracted Eastwood to the film? “It was a tribute to the common man,” he says. “These were just young men going on a trip, and when this terrorist got on the train, they jumped into action and potentially saved a lot of lives.”

Email Shirrel: srhoades@aol.com