Bea says: I enjoyed this much more than I thought I would - Cecil and I often have a (long) short-list of current films we want to see, and as our free time is limited, if we have time to see a film we see whatever we can from the list.
Going in, I feared an action film but I have to say, I found it very, very interesting. Partly this was because the film spends a long time on the backstory, and as I am narrative-driven in films, I preferred this to lots of time on the action sequence of the actual event on the train. Others may not enjoy the focus on the backstory as much as I did.
The backstory takes us right back to the middle school/early high school years of the three friends who end up on the Paris train, playing war games in the open country around where they grew up, and military fatigues to school. Later, high school separated them, and they all ended up trying to find their individual paths; our hero Spencer Stone is actually a bit lost, not making it in the military into the role he wants, and not excelling in the role he ended up in.
They all take a bit of time out and holiday in Europe, backpacking the familiar trail of Venice, to Amsterdam, to Paris (I think I did almost exactly the same route 25 years ago). Amsterdam was a wild night for them (I heard the older couple near us whisper to each other "we didn't do that in Amsterdam!") and hung over, they board the Paris train the next day.
In fact, they only go ahead because Spencer feels he must; and that is a loop in the film's plot I found really interesting, and which Cecil also refers to - Spencer feels like he was born to do something important, of value to others. Many years ago I read the John Irving book A Prayer for Owen Meany, and was put in mind of that book when watching this film - "the shot"; although in Owen Meany's case, he knew what it was he would be doing, many years later. But like Stone, he had to convince friends that there was something important to come, and to practise and prepare.
Irving's novel was written years before this event (I read the book in the 1990s) - a case of life imitating art....If you enjoyed this film, I would definitely recommend reading it, and in fact I might re-read it again now.
My research post-film, in a relaxed lunch spot in Ballarat was interesting, as Cecil mentions - Stone had left the military, his main aim in life as a child/young person, now he had done the thing he always felt he had to do, perhaps there was no reason to be in it anymore, but was studying. His two friends did not seem to be progressing quite so well; relying a little bit on their fame...I couldn't quite tell.
Nice direction from Clint Eastwood.
***1/2
Cecil says: I hadn't realised Clint Eastwood directed this film until I watched the credits roll at the end. And the interesting thing he chose to do was to cast the actual people involved in the Thalys incident to play the parts as themselves through most of the movie.
Actually they did pretty well, considering they are not actors. It's probably easier to play yourself, if you are not a trained actor, but still even playing yourself can become really wooden when you try too hard to act, so congrats to them for carrying this off.
The only weakness for me in this portrayal of three 'ordinary' American dudes acting the heroes when a terrorist tries to massacre passengers on an Amsterdam to Paris train was in the black character (Sal). As a child, he is portrayed as quirky, questioning and cheeky; as an adult, he seems to have lost all of that curiosity and lateral thinking spirit his school boy character showed. I don't honesty believe such a creative child would end up as 'ordinary' as an adult, but who knows.
The main character of the three, Spencer Stone, is interesting. It's all very well, both for dramatic licence or for some sort of higher-level spiritual reason, to have a youngster say he senses he is on the path to do something extraordinary. But what happens if you are barely 20 and you have done your extraordinary act? What do you do for the rest of your life?
And it was interesting when Bea did some delving to find out that Spencer Stone is now studying International Relations at uni. What a fantastic next chapter for a guy like this. Good luck to him as he finds the next direction to take, and hopefully channels his passion and curiosity further. \
I was struck at the end how they had footage of the French President pinning the Legion d'Honneur onto these guys' lapels (I thought at first it was clever CGI work to have Pres Hollande footage and to have superimposed the actors we had seen into the scene - though at that stage I didn't realise Eastwood had used the actual characters). I wondered how they could possibly know just what an enormous thing that was for a French president to give three Americans that honour - and maybe doing an international relations degree might just help Spencer realise what a massive moment that was.
Bea and I discussed briefly the 'what would we have done?' question after the film. I know for sure I'd have been one of the passengers cowering behind a seat. I have acted in the past in minor incidents on London streets, but I know I don't have the skills necessary to prevent something as major as this. But these guys knew they did have the training, and hats off to them for acting.
Nobody actually knows how they'll act until confronted with a scenario for real. And for me such questions were first raised when I read a Simone de Beauvoir novel set during the Nazi occupation of Paris. That somehow would be a harder dilemma: dealing with 4 years of constant occupation would be very different from a sudden mad terror incident.\
The film itself was pretty slow-paced.
We spend far too long at the gelato stand in Venice, I'm not sure the point of the German exchange student interlude, and we have long moments lingering on minutiae of life, which made me wonder what else Eastwood could have done with his film time? Surely taking the story on beyond the incident might have been interesting, though possibly challenging also?
It was a delight to have our first time at the beautiful 1920s Regent Theatre in Ballarat, and the movie was fairly well-attended for a Sunday morning slot. Not a bad way to spend a quiet Sunday
***
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