The 15:17 to Paris
Warner Bros. | Release Date: February 9, 2018 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
45
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 36 Critic Reviews
Positive:
5
Mixed:
22
Negative:
9
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)John SemleyFeb 8, 2018
The 15:17 To Paris, like "Sully," "American Sniper" and (to a lesser extent) "Gran Torino" before it, combines such conceptions of late style: both harmonious and intransigent, resolute and difficult, defined by lively contradiction. Read full review
80
The New York TimesA.O. ScottFeb 7, 2018
Mr. Eastwood, who has long favored a lean, functional directing style, practices an economy here that makes some of his earlier movies look positively baroque. He almost seems to be testing the limits of minimalism, seeing how much artifice he can strip away and still achieve some kind of dramatic impact. Read full review
70
New York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinFeb 14, 2018
Clint Eastwood’s The 15:17 to Paris celebrates old-fashioned American heroism, and I like it — in spite of its dumbbell infelicities. Read full review
70
TimeStephanie ZacharekFeb 9, 2018
The sections detailing the men’s childhood in Sacramento, with Judy Greer and Jenna Fischer playing beleaguered moms? Not so exciting. But then, the very averageness of these conscientious, gutsy guys is precisely the point. Read full review
63
Rolling StonePeter TraversFeb 8, 2018
The complex movie that might have been is still on the drawing board, teasing us with a deeper story that's disappointingly out of reach. Read full review
60
UproxxKeith PhippsFeb 8, 2018
Whatever he’s done in the past, Eastwood here seems most interested in paying tribute to some men who deserve the commendation — nothing more, and nothing less. Read full review
58
The Film StageDaniel SchindelFeb 8, 2018
The 15:17 to Paris is a long stretch of boredom culminating in one jolt of interest. Read full review
58
IndieWireEric KohnFeb 8, 2018
Eastwood remains a deeply purposeful filmmaker, and The 15:17 to Paris clearly has a plan — it builds to a riveting showdown, with a unique kind of payoff enhanced by the authenticity of its design. It’s a fascinating gamble even when it doesn’t hold together. Read full review
50
ObserverRex ReedFeb 14, 2018
Despite good intentions, the movie never lives up to the breathless excitement the real-life story promises. Read full review
50
Slant MagazineChuck BowenFeb 10, 2018
One misses the prismatic structure of the 15:17 to Paris book, which fuses multiple points of view and which is reduced by Dorothy Blyskal's script to cut-and-pasted bromides. Read full review
50
SlateSam AdamsFeb 9, 2018
Eastwood and Blyskal can’t seem to decide whether they want Stone et al. to be ordinary people thrust into an extraordinary situation or whether they were destined for greatness, so they waffle between foreshadowing and simply biding their time. Read full review
50
Los Angeles TimesKenneth TuranFeb 8, 2018
Though the sequences of the actual heroism on the Paris-bound train are fully as crisp and involving as you'd expect, the other sections of the film, intent on demonstrating how undeniably everyday the three participants were up to that crucial moment, fall regrettably flat. Read full review
50
RogerEbert.comMatt Zoller SeitzFeb 8, 2018
To call Clint Eastwood's The 15:17 to Paris a mixed bag would be generous. It packs all the wild action you came to see into a 20-minute stretch near the end, and elsewhere gives us something like a platonic buddy version of Richard Linklater's "Before" trilogy. Read full review
50
Philadelphia Daily NewsGary ThompsonFeb 8, 2018
The incident on the train accounts for just a few minutes of screen time — for another 90 minutes they’re in a flatlined buddy movie, without much help from Eastwood (he insisted they not train as actors) or the screenplay. Read full review
50
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperFeb 8, 2018
Even though of course we recognize the bravery and selfless heroism of the men on that train who risked their lives to save others, and even though there are a few pulse-quickening moments in The 15:17 to Paris, the movie is slow-paced and feels padded, even with that running time of just over an hour and a half. Read full review
50
Movie NationRoger MooreFeb 7, 2018
A mawkish Dorothy Blyskal script, based on a memoir by the three, a cumbersome flashback structure that lacks suspense, a grasped then quickly abandoned cloying voice-over narration and the unaffected and ineffective acting make this feel like the worst movie Clint’s made since he stopped teaming up with a baboon. Read full review
50
The Associated PressJake CoyleFeb 7, 2018
It’s not the quality of the acting that limits Eastwood’s film. It’s a threadbare script that fails to find much of a story to tell behind the headlines. Read full review
50
VarietyOwen GleibermanFeb 7, 2018
The oddity of the movie — and this is baked into the way Eastwood conceived it, sticking to the facts and not over-hyping anything — is that this vision of real-life heroism is so much less charged than the Hollywood version might be that it often feels as if a dramatic spark plug is missing. Read full review
50
The Hollywood ReporterTodd McCarthyFeb 7, 2018
Eastwood's main achievement here lies in trusting his hunch that the young men could handle playing themselves onscreen, with an acceptable naturalness and without self-consciousness. This they do, without a false note. Read full review
42
The PlaylistWill AshtonFeb 9, 2018
It’s an inspiring story, but Eastwood can’t find the spark to bring it life. Read full review
42
The A.V. ClubIgnatiy VishnevetskyFeb 8, 2018
A failed experiment in stunt casting. Read full review
40
EmpireIan FreerFeb 12, 2018
Clint Eastwood’s bold choice to have real protagonists does little to enliven a listless story about friendship. Although the terrorist attack is effectively staged, The 15:17 To Paris fails to spin a remarkable film out of a remarkable act of heroism. Read full review
40
The AtlanticDavid SimsFeb 12, 2018
Perhaps his curious gambit of casting real-life figures would never have gelled, but Stone, Skarlatos, and Sadler are not unsympathetic, just untrained in front of the camera. With more time and effort The 15:17 to Paris might have worked; as it is, it’s little more than a failed experiment. Read full review
40
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzFeb 8, 2018
If Eastwood wanted to use the real men, a documentary would have been just as powerful and more dramatically satisfying. Instead, the acting is distracting. The film’s intentions are sterling. Its execution, not so much. Read full review
40
Time OutJoshua RothkopfFeb 8, 2018
Dramatically inert and flatter than a buzz cut, the movie ends up diminishing their moment of heroism by turning it into a defiantly amateurish piece of junior-high-grade theatrics. Read full review
40
TheWrapRobert AbeleFeb 8, 2018
A few minutes of nail-biting, recreated heroism isn’t enough to justify the other 90-or-so minutes in Clint Eastwood’s dry salute of a movie, The 15:17 to Paris, which struggles to mix patriotism, friendship, God, and destiny into something meaningful. Read full review
40
Screen DailyTim GriersonFeb 7, 2018
On the whole, 15:17’s slavish adherence to reality ends up arguing that, sometimes, a little Hollywood phoniness can go a long way. Read full review
38
New York PostSara StewartFeb 9, 2018
Compelling drama it is not. Read full review
38
Boston GlobeTy BurrFeb 8, 2018
A movie about ordinary American heroes that stars ordinary American heroes. About 15 minutes of the film concerns the actual heroics. The rest is . . . ordinary. Read full review
38
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsFeb 8, 2018
It’s the last thing he wanted, I’m sure, but Eastwood’s latest ends up feeling like a stunt. Read full review
33
ConsequenceBlake GobleFeb 9, 2018
The 15:17 to Paris is too unfocused, too hard to take seriously, and too short to really get invested in it. It’s an Eastwood misfire. Read full review
30
Austin ChronicleSteve DavisFeb 14, 2018
Given its can’t-miss potential, you’d think this would be one kick-ass movie. So why is The 15:17 to Paris such a trainwreck? Read full review
25
Tampa Bay TimesSteve PersallFeb 8, 2018
Like many sudden heroes, these lifelong friends led unremarkable lives until fate stepped in. Eastwood is committed to depicting every single unremarkable step along the way. Read full review
25
San Francisco ChronicleCarla MeyerFeb 8, 2018
With The 15:17 to Paris, director Clint Eastwood overwhelms the extraordinary with the mundane, turning the true story of three Americans who helped subdue a gunman aboard a European train into a tedious film. Read full review
25
Entertainment WeeklyKevin P. SullivanFeb 8, 2018
Eastwood seems to be reaching for some level of realism, but when every single interaction feels like half-coded AI tried to recreate bro talk, it’s clear that a mistake has been made. Read full review
20
IGNSimon ThompsonFeb 8, 2018
One of the worst, most inexcusably poor movies Clint Eastwood has turned out in his career behind the camera and a possible contender for one of the worst films of the year. The 15:17 to Paris is so bad in so many ways that it’s impossible to recommend and that’s a crying shame. Read full review
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