The preposterously silly and bullet-riddled From Paris With Love is so leaden and obnoxious that it actually makes you long for the John Travolta of Old Dogs.Well, maybe that’s a stretch. But Travolta overplays his trigger-happy, racist, sexist character so much that he qualifies as one of the most annoying screen presences ever. This is meant to be a mismatched buddy spy thriller, but it’s hard to imagine who would possibly want to be his buddy.
Paris is intended as both an action movie and a comic parody of the genre. But the clichéd hybrid goes over like a lead balloon stuck on the Eiffel Tower.
The bad guys uniformly are dark-skinned-Asians, and at least one of the key Americans is defiantly ugly. That would be American spy Charlie Wax, played by a shaved-headed, dark-goateed Travolta. He’s bad, but he’s light-years away from cool. He spouts inane catchphrases like “Wax on, wax off,” the Karate Kid line which, when defiantly leveled at a bevy of Asians, is nothing short of offensive. He has no discernible relationships with people but gets plenty worked up by weaponry. The bigger the munitions, the more passionate he becomes. Another favorite phrase pertains to his affection for his beloved jumbo assault weapon: “Me and Mrs. Jones,” he coos.
In contrast, Jonathan Rhys-Meyers plays James Reese, a chess-playing, Cambridge-educated American aide to the U.S. ambassador (Richard Durden) in Paris. He has a beautiful girlfriend, Caroline (Kasia Smutniak), but they are plagued by bouts of romance interruptus when Reese gets mysterious calls for his low-level CIA services. He’s a small-time operative but yearns to be an agent. He’s not as obnoxious as Wax, but he’s a damn fool, especially in matters of the heart.
Travolta and Rhys-Meyers lack any visible chemistry. Then, inexplicably, there’s a tender moment that blossoms between them. It’s as if director Pierre Morel suddenly remembered he was making a buddy thriller. Morel more skillfully directed last year’s Taken, which at least offered a new twist on a kidnapping story.
Between Adi Hasak’s offensive and occasionally laughable screenplay and Morel’s dull direction, the film is a mess. And the actors manage to muck things up even further.
Wax and Reese’s first assignment is to take down a Chinese drug ring. But their job gets murkier and results in their unraveling a massive terrorist plot. Audiences are likely to figure out a key double-crossing scheme early on. But Reese, despite his intellectualism, is astoundingly clueless. He’s also insipid. Still, his blandness is preferable to Wax’s obstreperous bravado and toxic shtick. Travolta appears to be having fun double-handedly wielding firearms and firing a bazooka on a crowded freeway. But that dubious enjoyment doesn’t translate in any way to the viewer.
By Claudia Puig, USA TODAY
