Clint Eastwood’s terrorist-on-a-train film unspools like a cinéma vérité home movie. Three yokels from Sacramento – California’s middle-American capital city – get the chance to be heroes and don’t blow it.

Spencer Stone, Alek Skarlatos & Anthony Sadler famously play themselves as the three dudes who stopped an Islamic terrorist on a train to Paris. Spencer gets the most screen time. He’s the man who took down the Islamist. Dude charged right into the barrel of that sick fuck’s rifle – straight-up American hero stuff.

They’re regular Joes, not especially bright, bad or bold. Two are sons of single-moms, each diagnosed as ADD during their Sacramento boyhood. The movie spends most of its running time on that boyhood, adding up to a real-life boys-to-men story. The actual action on the train is sliced into little bits, teased throughout the film, the long interludes filled with flashbacks to the boys’ childhood and coming-of-age.

The film opens on the Islamist, only showing his lower half as he walks through a train station. Much later, his handsome face is revealed, twisted with hate. Thankfully, the evil man was stopped by three dudes from Sacto, now memorialized in a very fine movie by the icon of American heroism known as Clint Eastwood.