I’m happy that the heroic story of Spencer Stone, Anthony Sadler, and Alek Skarlatos will be immortalized on film. I remember when this story came out that it was such a wonderful tale of heroism that made everyone feel good everywhere, and when I heard Clint Eastwood was directing, I thought, even better! This guy will make that train scene looks super tense and interesting, and it was. However, too many casting experiments, a reprehensible script and Eastwood’s directorial style render the movie a waste of time until the last 20 minutes. Just a bummer, but at least these heroes get a chance to look heroic.
Stone, Sadler, and Skarlatos all play themselves in the movie. We start though with their time in Catholic school where the three kids meet and become friends. Stone, the primary focus of the movie, flounders through life until the military gives him a purpose. Skarlatos is also a military guy, and goes on leave in Germany to meet an exchange student from college. Stone, stationed in Portugal, asks Skarlatos and Sadler if they want to go backpacking through Europe, where the 3 guys have a great time…that is, until Ayoub El-Khazzani boards their Thalys train in an attempt to murder many, many people.
Clint Eastwood famously likes to film quickly, and leave the actors to do what they do. When the film is Sully, that works fine because Tom Hanks and Aaron Eckhart are professionals who know what they are doing and don’t need microdirection. The three leads in this movie aren’t actors. They NEED a pro like Eastwood to take a hands on approach to help them create a persona for the movie, but he doesn’t. As a result, the scenes with the three heroes are inert and acted by normal people, so they don’t build toward that inevitable climax. Eastwood usually is good at building tension to key moments in the movie, but to do that, you have to set up a solid foundation for the movie, which this script does not provide him. The running theme for the story is that these guys’ lives were building toward something, that from youth, they were destined for greatness. However, the scenes at the Catholic high school are flimsy at best: we get TOLD that Spencer is nice to his friends, but we never are SHOWN why. Come on! One scene of standing up to a bully. Also, this movie’s theme doesn’t make sense; these guys, at best, are screw ups or aimless men. What Eastwood should have shot was these guys screwing up and learning maybe so when the time was right, they were prepared. However, Eastwood shoots the movie like they were destined for greatness because they played war with guns and wore army fatigues, and teachers who thought they needed to be medicated are evil because all Spencer needs is prayer. But that story is so scattershot that it doesn’t really make any sense, a rarity for the talented director, who should know better.
However their early lives went though, Spencer, Alek, and Anthony are undeniable heroes. They stood down the face of evil and faced it head on. Do yourself a favor. When you rent/watch this movie on a plane or on Netflix, just fast forward to the last 20 minutes, so you can see just how brave these guys are and not how they were misused by a lazy director and terrible story. Thanks guys. And I agree with you about Amsterdam, just a super fun clubbing experience!