Reviewed by Rama Gaind.
Director: Clint Eastwood, Roadshow Entertainment.
Cast: Alek Skarlatos, Anthony Sadler, Spencer Stone, Ray Corasani.
Academy Award-winning director Clint Eastwood (Sully, Million Dollar Baby, Unforgiven, American Sniper, Gran Torino) goes behind the camera to tell the real-life story of three men whose brave act turned them into heroes during a high-speed rail ride.
Eastwood casts these men into the main roles. The heroic trio, who had been friends since childhood, were Airman First Class Spencer Stone, Oregon National Guardsman Alek Skarlatos, and college student Anthony Sadler.
On August 21, 2015, the Americans were travelling through Europe and were instrumental in restraining a terrorist who tried to kill passengers on the Thalys train #9364 bound for Paris. Their intervention saved the lives of more than 500 passengers.
The gunman was a Morrocan named Ayoub El Khazzani. He left a washroom strapped with weapons, wrestled with a couple of budding heroes, and shot one of them in the neck with a pistol.
For their bravery, French President François Hollande awarded the Legion of Honor, France’s highest award, to Sadler, Skarlatos, Stone and Chris Norman, a British businessman living in France, who had also assisted.
An ineffectual way to pay a sympathetic tribute for an act of heroism, the film does not place emphasis on the assault. Instead, it mainly follows the course of the friends’ lives, from the struggles of childhood and finding their foothold in life, to the series of unlikely events leading up to the attack.
