Film Critics Lose It Over Eastwood’s Patriotic ‘Paris’
Clint Eastwood did it again with his newest film, “The 15:17 to Paris.”
The 87-year-old icon drove liberal critics batty with his 2014 smash “American Sniper.” Heroism? Sacrifice? All-American values? It’s like garlic to some film critics. They’d rather swoon at films depicting the U.S. Military in an unsavory fashion.
“The 15:17 to Paris” makes their jobs harder. The story focuses on three heroes (playing themselves) who thwarted a terrorist attack aboard a Paris-bound train in 2015.
![THE 15:17 TO PARIS - Official Trailer [HD]](https://www.hollywoodintoto.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-youtube-lyte/lyteCache.php?origThumbUrl=https%3A%2F%2Fi.ytimg.com%2Fvi%2FIC_lnyn2R2Q%2F0.jpg)
Some critics went the extra mile all the same. After all, “Paris” extols the American spirit, Christianity and military valor. That cannot stand in some quarters.
A few critics hated how Eastwood didn’t give enough screen time to the terrorist in question, Ayoub El-Khazzani. Take this review in The National Post.
15:17 to Paris overly simplifies the attack and its aftermath. The terrorist (Ray Corasani) snarls and wears sneakers, but there’s little more to him.
What were his favorite Web sites? Was he a glass half full kind of gent?
Slate also has the sads about the terrorist’s lack of definition.
And the sense of wheelspinning only underlines the movie’s failure to make its antagonist more than a cartoon scowl with a Kalashnikov. The geese in Sully were more well-rounded characters.
Slant Magazine joins the chorus, complaining about the terrorist’s abbreviated screen time.
One misses the prismatic structure of the 15:17 to Paris book, which fuses multiple points of view—including El-Khazzani’s—and which is reduced by Dorothy Blyskal’s script to cut-and-pasted bromides.
The Daily Beast attacks Eastwood for daring to use symbolism in an unapproved manner.
As for the villain in question, Eastwood primarily films his hands, sneakers, arms, and back, all as a means of making him some sort of faceless existential threat—a symbolic vehicle for Stone’s “greater purpose.” Mostly, though, it’s just another example of The 15:17 to Paris’ regrettable blankness.
The Pittsburgh Post Gazette drops in some Trump bashing mid-review while bemoaning the film’s patriotic meme.
But at this point, there’s a certain repellent hubris about [Eastwood’s] patriotic formula: Make America grate again, on the rest of the world, in paint-by-numbers (red, white and blue), which happen to be the same as the Tricouleur — not that Mr. Eastwood makes any use or reference to that.
The Irish Times takes issue with the main character’s faith but cheers a blast of anti-Americanism in the script:
There’s a great deal of God-bothering throughout. (An early ADD diagnosis for Skarlatos and Stone is met with “My God is bigger than your statistics”.) But that is only to be expected in a film about friends who insisted they were “guided by God”…
The film does take at least one swipe at American exceptionalism; when Stone and Sadler assert that Hitler died in his eyrie surrounded by American forces, they are soon corrected by a German tour guide: “You Americans can’t take the credit every time evil is defeated.” Still, those seeking geopolitics or any hint that US foreign policy helped forge Isis will be sorely disappointed.
Because that’s why most people go to the movies in the first place, right?
RELATED: How Liberal Media Bias Extends to Arts Coverage
Professional curmudgeon Rex Reed offers up this odd observation: “We never really learn much about the three leads or their take on terrorism…” Here’s a wild guess … they’re against it?
The Daily Mail goes anti Christian with its review with a dollop of Trump bashing.
In that sacred American way, incidentally, their Christianity is not incompatible with an obsession with firearms….The narrative throbs with Eastwood’s conviction — shared, as we know, by President Trump — that the best way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. Better still, a good guy with a gun and a bible.
Let’s save the “best” for last.
In a bizarre sort of “can you top this” comes The New Yorker. The outlet’s critic calls the film a “reactionary fable.” And it gets worse from there.
In one peculiar sequence, he goes round to see Spencer, who opens his closet and hauls out an entire arsenal of toy guns, tossing them onto the bed. “You never been hunting?” he says, adding, “Let’s go and find Alek and play war.”
As I watched the scene, I thought, You could cut it out of this movie and paste it, unchanged, into another one, about a nice suburban kid who grows up and carries out a mass shooting.
It’s clear we have a winner.
Movie critics are scum. I wouldn’t feed them to my pigs.
I’ve been following Mr. Toto’s reviews for quite some time, and he’s now my go-to reviewer. Finally someone who can think rationally about modern film!
A “reactionary fable”? The movie isn’t a fable. It is a true account but the people who were actually there.
Film critics become more and more irrelevant daily. I stopped caring about, reading them, etc., years ago. Found some wonderful films…Taking Chance, Digging to China, etc., without them. They lack intelligence, insight, common sense, any redeeming social value.
Would it matter to these nitwits that the three great heroes were honored by the French government
Probably not, because The Narrative!
Saw it – GREAT! Very enjoyable and you don’t walk out of theatre wishing you could rush and go take a shower. This is just a modern version of a 1940’s-50’s movie script…..what’s wrong with that?
Now those above quoted lefty outlets would of clapped like seals if the story went something like this….. The flashback shows 3 young boys fighting back against BULLIES at school. So they want to “get tough” and join the military. But there they start to realize they are out of place. They doubt their sexuality. They request gender reassignment surgery. A series of white, red neck, Yosemitie Sam sergeants deny the request and make life hell. They get kicked out. Then, they take a trip to europe because they saw some google ad which said some socialist western European govt was providing tax payer subsidized gender wack-a-dick-odomitiy operations. But on the way, they get on a train where some terrorist reminds them of their mean drill sergeant and they throw high heels and pull his hair on his beard until authorities arrive…..
Snooty movie critics would have this up for picture of the year!
GO SEE THE MOVIE IT’S WORTH YOUR TIME AND MONEY!
I saw that one. Did you you write it? That was great. I want to see Clint’s movie a hundred times.
I wrote the above – yes. Sadly, it’s a commentary on the state of hollyweird.
The democrat-media party literally hates America.
Eastwood is such a jerk. He made the Americans who stopped the jihadi murder into heroes and the jihadi murder into a villain. How dare him!!
According to these progressive nitwits the facts are far more nuanced. According to them the Americans are genocidal maniacs and and the brown Islamic freedom fighter is the hero
In a weird way, all these critiques of the film make sense. They’re from outlets that have a readership that is, itself, at odds with the notions of American exceptionalism and patriotism.
It’s likely their audience WOULDN’T like this movie. Fortunately, few of the people who will enjoy this movie still read what passes for journalism at those outlets.
Correct! This is what happens when everything you analyze is through the spectrum of race, gender, and religion.
A Lefty whacko has never met an un-American he did not like. We the patriots have your number,whacko
Hilarious, they still don’t realize that the whole country is laughing at them.
Simple, bulletproof decision making tool:
If a liberal thinks it’s a bad idea, then it most certainly is a good idea. Liberals possess a genetic defect that prevents them from processing logic and common sense.
Small hearts and vastly smaller brains.
Speaking of ideas, here’s something I learned from my 21 years of working in higher education:
There is no idea so expensive, stupid, or downright evil that academics and intellectuals somewhere won’t buy into it.
These critics constantly praise movies that treat American businessmen, soldiers, and Southerners as one-dimensional, frothing-at-the-mouth villains. But murderous terrorists need to be treated as complex, fully fleshed-out characters with hopes and dreams of their own, right?
Thank you. As a southerner, i agree. The left is our enemy. The left is America’s enemy. They are Godless people.