[T]here's no working filmmaker who more accurately depicts the America that I see whenever I drive through it. The America of Clint's post-American Sniper output is an America of shitty bungalows and cheap apartments and ugly strip malls and crumbling legion halls, all shot in a very matter-of-fact style that doesn't rub your nose in ugliness, but doesn't manufacture any prettiness for you either. Populating these bleak landscapes are unremarkable characters (most of them based on real people) on a path of downward mobility […].
The 15:17 to Paris subscribes to the particularly all-American retail Protestantism in which God has a plan for you, and manifests decisively in the lives of the faithful. The God who answers Spencer Stone’s prayers is not the same God that Milton served even in his blindness. If nothing out of the ordinary had happened on that train, would these dudes’ lives have been worth it, or would their service have felt like an anticlimax? The 15:17 to Paris rewards its characters’ ambitions of being God’s “instrument”—how wonderful, but also how disturbing, the way that faith is so wrapped up in exceptionalism.
— Mark Asch (Reverse Shot)
Synopsis: On Aug. 21, 2015, the world watches in stunned silence as the media reports a thwarted terrorist attack on a train that's bound for Paris -- an attempt prevented by three young Americans traveling together through Europe. The heroic and courageous actions of Anthony Sadler, Alek Skarlatos and Spencer Stone help to save the lives of more than 500 passengers on board.