Movie Review #29 From Paris with Love

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From Paris with Love (2010) John Travolta, Jonathan Rhys Meyers Directed by Pierre Morel

Way back in March of 2009 I wrote my first review of a movie for this blog, it was Taken (2008) directed by Pierre Morel, I was very impressed with that film. I gave Taken a very good 7.0 in that review, and although From Paris with Love won’t do that well in this review I enjoyed it enough to recommend it, and stay on Morel’s bandwagon long enough to see his next film.

From Paris with Love is the fast-paced story of a couple of spies who partner up while they search for a terrorist in Paris who plans to blow up a Peace Summit. Essentially this is a buddy cop movie…err a buddy spy movie that hopes that you buy into the odd-couple-ness of its two stars. The “Felix” in this film is James Reece (played well enough by the pretty boy Jonathan Rhys Meyers…if I had a wife I probably couldn’t be mad if she left me for this guy.) The “Oscar” in the film is Charlie Wax (played actually not half bad by John Travolta). You know as time goes on actors who have been around awhile tend to play themselves, just louder…they parody their past roles and basically just cash their paychecks (evident with Pacino (see Devils Advocate), De Niro (see City By the Sea), and both Travolta and Denzel (see the Taking of Pelham 123)…sometimes we like these guys so much, we let them get away with this (again see Pacino in Devil’s Advocate), and of course sometimes we don’t (again see the Taking of Pelham 123), this time with Travolta and his bald head and bad-ass goatee, I will let it slide. His performance as Charlie Wax is…Yes over the top…Yes loud…and Yes a play on his Pulp Fiction character Vincent Vega (Man I shot Marvin in the face!...I didn’t mean too), but it works well enough. Rhys Meyers also does ok as Reece, though his accent slips up enough times for you to notice he isn’t even close to an American (in real life he is Irish…but his slip-ups just sound like mix of 5 different accents). Like most of the director Morel’s work this movie is about action and suspense, From Paris with Love delivers on action, but it doesn’t do as well with the suspense part…as the plot twists are lazy and not great (though the bad girl in the film is a really hot new face Kasia Smutniak). The element of this film that keeps it recommendable is it’s run-time…a very smooth 95 minutes…and like Taken you go in…watch some bad-ass-ness, and leave happy enough. It’ll keep you going until we see Taken 2…go see it if you’ve been lacking action in your entertainment.

(The Shawshank Scale 1-10) The film From Paris with Love is good enough to get a fair 6.0, the body count and the Paris scenery was good enough for my hour and a half of time…check it out…but don’t rush.

Food For Thought: A Superbowl tradition: Popeye’s Chicken…which made me a bit sick, so then I had a few Heineken Lights to settle my tummy. Up next for Travolta is Wild Hogs 2 (really is that necessary?) For Rhys Meyers we have At Swim-Two-Birds a film about a playwright that is mingling with his characters. For Morel, he goes sci-fi with the next incarnation of Dune…due for 2012.