45
Metascore
36 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 80The New York TimesA.O. ScottThe New York TimesA.O. ScottMr. 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.
- 50The Hollywood ReporterTodd McCarthyThe Hollywood ReporterTodd McCarthyEastwood'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.
- 50VarietyOwen GleibermanVarietyOwen GleibermanThe 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.
- 50The Associated PressJake CoyleThe Associated PressJake CoyleIt’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.
- 50Movie NationRoger MooreMovie NationRoger MooreA 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.
- 50Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperChicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperEven 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.
- 40Screen DailyTim GriersonScreen DailyTim GriersonOn the whole, 15:17’s slavish adherence to reality ends up arguing that, sometimes, a little Hollywood phoniness can go a long way.
- 40TheWrapRobert AbeleTheWrapRobert AbeleA 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.
- 40Time OutJoshua RothkopfTime OutJoshua RothkopfDramatically 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.