Director: Pierre Morel
Screenplay: Adi Hasak
Story: Luc Besson
Cast: John Travolta, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Kasia Smutniak
Rated: R
I’m a firm believer in knowing as little about a movie as possible before seeing it. Sure, I like to have a general idea of what I’m getting into, but I really prefer not to know anything beyond maybe the basic essentials, such as the cast, pertinent crew, and genre. I like to see everything else unfold on the screen without my having been spoiled or biased prior to the viewing. For that reason, I always try to avoid trailers, previews, and advance features for movies I already know I’m interested in seeing.
I knew nothing at all about From Paris With Love and didn’t have much interest in checking it out, so I wasn’t very bothered by seeing its previews pop up on TV and its trailers in front of other movies I went to see over the past month or so. Imagine my surprise, then, when the movie itself turned out to be much more than the goofy stepchild of Rush Hour it appeared to be in the previews.
As it turns out, From Paris With Love is more about the action than about the laughs, and there is plenty of shooty explodey punchy action to go around. John Travolta stars as Charlie Wax, an all around badass superspy with a shaved head and a penchant for awkwardly timed violence and trysts. He links up with James Reece, played by Jonathan Rhys Meyers, an ambitious aide to the American ambassador in France with dreams of superspy stardom of his own. The CIA tasks Reece with driving Wax around Paris on Wax’s current mission, which ends up being much bigger, more complicated, and more personal than Reece could have imagined.
From Paris With Love falls squarely into the buddy cop action genre, and it’s one of the best ones I’ve seen in a long time. While the previews might have shelved it alongside Rush Hour, it had more of a Lethal Weapon vibe going for it. Granted, it’s more on par with the quality of the last two Lethal Weapon movies than the first two, but it just might be a more enjoyable watch for me personally after Mel Gibson went crazy. Here, Travolta is the crazy but competent loose cannon while Meyers has the straight-man Danny Glover role. Although I don’t recall Danny Glover’s Murtaugh ever running around town with an ornamental vase full of coke in tow.
Pierre Morel (2008’s Taken and the upcoming Dune adaptation) directs the film and, even though it does share some of the violent flare of Taken, it also feels in line with the action films of Luc Besson, upon whose original story the script is based. The action here is frantic and occasionally extremely violent, and there’s no shortage of blood all over the walls, the floor, and Jonathan Rhys Meyers. The requisite chases by car and on foot add to the ever present gunfights, bombings, and one particularly awesome melee encounter with a French-Asian street gang.
I went into From Paris With Love expecting an unimpressive buddy cop comedy, but I left having seen a really fun and sometimes intense buddy cop action flick. Travolta and Meyers have good enough chemistry to make me hope for a sequel, and I’d have a hard time not recommending this film to anyone wanting a non-cerebral shoot-’em-up.
Rating: 4 / 5 Stars
