Friday, February 5

From Paris With Love
(2010 d. Pierre Morel)

Seemingly pulled from the shelf to fill in an empty Europa slot, to my surprise the movie was recently made - apparently trying to capitalize on the success found by Morel's suprise-hit Taken. However, Liam Neeson was the force that drove that film and no such character (or actor) is found here.

A young wannabe special ops agent (Rhys-Myers) gets partnered up with unconventional agent Charlie Wax (Travolta) to bring down a terrorist cell.

If you've ever had the chance to meet or even listen to Luc Besson, he's one smooth cat. But not every story idea the man has is worth producing. I went expecting passable Eurotrash, but the movie is a jumble of incoherent editing, dumb plot twists, and the biggest problem of all: John Travolta. He's not playing the villain, but I still just don't buy him in this type of character. It's almost like he's forgotten where he is and believes himself back in Pulp Fiction. From his discourse on the grammar of "the m-word," eating Royales with cheese, and indiscriminant, remorseless bloodshed his act of the stereotypical ugly American gets old really fast. His character seems on a quest to insult and then kill every minority in Paris. Rhys-Myers acquits himself decently (even handling a ridiculous sequence of dialogue on how love brings peace) but why make him an American and force him to speak in S.A.D.? I didn't buy him coming from the east side of NY for one second.

The good: Rhys-Myers.
The bad: John Travolta, incoherent action scenes, value-less murder.
The ridiculous: Some scenes of note:
* Reese's test to determine his spy ability consist of changing license plates on a car inside an empty parking garage
*During his girlfriend's marriage proposal, Reese gets an urgent call to meet up immediately with Wax and he'll get his shot at being a real agent. What does he do? Leisurely eats dinner with his new fiancee and has a long drawn out goodbye before he finally leaves.
*Wax shoots out the ceiling of a Chinese restaurant and cocaine unendingly rains down out of the bullet holes
* Reese carries around a vase of cocaine for a good 20 minutes of the movie
* Wax toasts some baddies by dropping a suicide-bomb vest onto the roof of their getaway car
* Chasing another baddie about to bomb a motorcade, there just happens to be a giant grenade launcher in the back seat of the Audi.


seen at AMC Century City for $7