The 15:17 to Paris

Directed by Clint Eastwood, this drama has a first half that's slow and awkward, mainly due to the stars' amateurish acting; but once it finally gets going, Eastwood's skilled touch reveals itself. The 15:17 to Paris isn't the first movie to cast non-actors in key roles (see Act of Valor), and it faces most of the same problems as Skarlatos, Stone, and Sadler struggle through memorized dialogue. But you could almost argue that this is like a work of Italian neorealism; indeed, Eastwood once worked with a pioneer of that movement, Vittorio De Sica, on a 1967 movie called The Witches.

It's true that the long backstory stuff -- especially the bits about the central trio as middle school kids -- is wince-inducing and possibly unnecessary. But if you have patience until the European trip starts, things start getting exciting. And the final stretch featuring the attack and the heroic act is worth the trouble. Eastwood shows it all with his usual classical simplicity. Usually in biopics (such as Eastwood's own previous film, the terrific Sully), an epilogue shows footage of the real-life person or persons, and we're left to compare it to the performance of the actors we've just seen. In The 15:17 to Paris, it's the same faces; this may have been a re-creation, but there was no pretending.