From Paris With Love
By: Amy Nicholson
So what was Pierre Morel doing while Alessandrin’s sequel squandered his original? Shooting his own competing Parisian shoot-em-up, also produced and written by the inexhaustible Luc Besson. A salute to the ’80s buddy cop movie, From Paris With Love is the McDonalds of French action flicks, right down to the Royale with Cheese feasted on by star John Travolta. Even before Travolta cracks open that infamous Styrofoam shell, it’s clear he’s gunning for a Pulp Fiction comeback. And this film wants that Tarantino magic, wedging in scenes where Travolta debates the origins of egg foo yung and sings “Mrs. Jones” to his pistol. Like the mindless thrillers of yore, this is all brains and no bullets. When Travolta partners with a greenhorn secret agent (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, who has a great bit of slapstick while planting a bug in the Foreign Minister’s office), they’re on a whirlwind two-day mission where their enemy is “terrorists.” Though they’re killing an average of one guy an hour (a stat Morel slaps up as a joke), there’s not even a specific evil plot or villain until the last reel. From Paris is all bravado and it nearly works. Travolta is squat, bald and unhinged; in one scene he peer-pressures Rhys-Meyers into snorting coke from a Ming Vase in a crowded Eiffel Tower elevator. But the flick’s insistence on playing dumb, on shooting suspects before interrogating them and explaining anything, puts your brain on autopilot. What breaks through the clatter is Kasia Smutniak’s turn as Rhys-Meyer’s fiancée, a gorgeous girl strong enough to whip out a jewelry box and do the proposing. When Rhys-Meyers smashes in the face of a gangster who dared to steal his engagement ring, we don’t blame him a bit.
DIGG | del.icio.us | REDDIT
