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Visual:		7.0
Audio:		7.0
Acting:		5.0
Writing:		3.0
Score:		5.0

Director(s):	Pierre Morel
Writer(s):	Adi Hasak (screenplay), Luc Besson (story)
Starring:	John Travolta • Jonathan Rhys Meyers
Genre:	Action • Comedy
Release Date:	February 05, 2010
Rated:

If you don’t know the name Pierre Morel, there’s no reason why you should. The French director’s workmanlike ethic has done wonders for his debut film, 2004’s parkour-heavy action flick District B13 and last year’s Taken, starring Liam Neeson as a former special forces agent hell-bent on getting his daughter back. Hmm, that plot sure sounds familiar – well, moving on. Morel has made his mark by providing high octane, well choreographed action in both films – the paper-thin plots propelling the agile protagonists of B13 as well as the more hard-hitting run-and-gun sleuth of Taken making for puerile but stylish entertainment. The latest in Morel’s oeuvre is From Paris With Love, a gung-ho action thriller in the same vein as Taken, but lacking much of the subtlety of the previous film.

In place of Liam Neeson’s stone-cold killer we get the loud brash and uncontrollably homicidal Charlie Wax (John Travolta in full Vincent Vega mode, spouting a white-boy version of bygone jive talk), the all-American secret agent. Wax is written to be the hero cheered on by the audience, the red-blooded killing machine with little concern for human life. Unfortunately for the film, he comes off as a dinosaur, a product of 80s gun fetishist nostalgia, a heavyweight who throws punches and tosses off explosives in sequences bordering on action masturbation.

His partner in crime is the green would-be spy James Reece (Jonathan Rhys Meyers, looking confused and feigning weak-willed irritation when the film calls for it). Reece wants to get in good with the Agency and that involves chauffeuring loose cannon Wax around Paris in a nonsense plot that moves from Chinese cocaine dealers to terrorists in a flight of fancy that seems to target our favorite action baddies – those drug-dealing fundamentalists who won’t back down, so shooting them in cold blood is not only right, it's stylish. By the time Travolta unleashes his kung fu on a street gang in slow motion, my brain had checked out.

Travolta spits his game as the foul-mouthed Wax but shows his age when it comes to action sequences, Morel’s playground. Luckily for us, you can often tell exactly what’s going on and a big part of the comedic element of the film comes from Reece reacting to Wax’s massacres. This is a buddy flick all the way, with all the dumb subplots packaged in a smooth moving thriller body. Sequences are brainless but fun to watch and the choreography impresses, even as the shootouts grow more convoluted. A car chase involving Travolta, a rocket launcher and a suicide car bomber is a hoot for its general refusal of the laws of physics.

Perhaps I’m being too hard on this film – after all, there’s a place in the modern box office for an 80s throwback, immoral and vapid as can be. But the problem is the subject matter hits a little too close to home. Sure, terrorists may be the choice baddie for films going way back (even the best of cheesy action flicks, True Lies, features terrorist villains), but From Paris treats its subject matter both deadly serious and downright irresponsible. At one point Wax philosophizes on the fatalistic nature of terrorists – somewhere between gunning down 20-odd people and blowing up a car. Similarly, when Reece has to talk down a suicide bomber particularly dear to him, the film moves inexplicably from male bonding action flick to romantic drama.

Wax seems to carry on some odd moral imperative to take out the bad guys but refuses to get involved when French police are about to open a booby-trapped door, an easily avoidable catastrophe if only he lets himself be seen. If he represents America, what does that say about us? He leaves burning embers and blown up bodies in his wake, but carries on like a stealthy secret agent.

In the age of Jason Bourne, the sleek thriller has by and by overtaken the shoot-em-up but From Paris With Love does succeed in parts due to sleek action and a tendency to keep the camera from shaking too much. The problem with it is primarily how recklessly it treats its subject matter. Timely maybe, but tasteless? For sure.