review by Scott Collura
If Dune fans felt a knot developing in their stomachs when Taken director Pierre Morel was announced as the new shepherd of the big-screen remake of the sci-fi classic, then Morel's newest film, From Paris With Love, is bound to drive a few of those same fans to the brink of full-fledged nausea. For if it's a thinking-man's Dune that they want, From Paris is about as far from such an approach as possible -- it's fast, funny, and pretty dumb.
It's also quite enjoyable, thanks largely to Morel's very willingness to play loose with logic. And that's the only way the film could work with the whack performance that John Travolta turns in as Charlie Wax, super-spy and crazy-man extraordinaire. After years of forgettable and similar roles, he has finally given us a character that can stand alongside the likes of Vincent Vega, Tony Manero, and in terms of pure brainlessness, Vinnie Barbarino.
Which isn't to say that Wax is a dummy. No, he's certainly the kind of guy you'd want on your side if you were to find yourself in Paris on the wrong side of a drug ring/terrorist plot. Or something like that, for the plot of From Paris -- scripted by Adi Hasak and producer Luc Besson -- is fairly incomprehensible. Not in that it's terribly complicated, but incomprehensible in the sense that the viewer's mind very quickly switches off all reason and common-sense circuits once the first chase scene/gun battle/faceless henchman massacre gets underway.
Jonathan Rhys Meyers is James Reece, an alternate-reality take on his Chris Wilton from Match Point who rather than murdering Scarlett Johansson (five-year-old spoiler!) went American and became a low-level government agent in France. Bucking for a promotion to the James Bond big leagues, Reece is hampered by his domestic leanings -- he not only has a girlfriend, Caroline (the suitably smoking Kasia Smutniak), but he also lives with her and actually loves her. (SPOILER WARNING for real this time!) Of course, any great spy only becomes great at what he does after the woman he loves turns out to be a double-agent, or dies, or both. Though Caroline seems like a really nice girl. Really.
Shortly after his arrival in France, Wax teams up with Reece who sees this joint mission as the perfect chance to finally elevate himself to the big leagues. But only if the bald, earring-wearing, wisecracking, trigger-happy Wax doesn't get them both killed first with his penchant for shooting dozens first and asking no questions later. He's also prone to making Pulp Fiction references, something which would be nigh-on unforgivable in any other film than this one, which really takes almost nothing seriously.
So From Paris is ultimately a buddy-cop movie, and is pretty mechanical in that sense. But again, the Travolta performance is just too good to care about anything else. When we first meet him, he's in the middle of a diatribe against, in his words, "a self-important, American-hating, frog leg-eating, snail-sucking, mutherf*$king, c*#ksucking bureaucrat." Or, a French customs agent -- take your pick. Travolta has a ball with such outbursts for a good hour and a half, and the viewer will, too, if they're willing to go along with it.
Rhys Meyers plays the straight man to Travolta, though he's compensated for his trouble by getting more of an emotional through line in the film. And Morel, the third star of the film, proves that the success of Taken was no fluke and that while the diehard Dune fans may be entering ulcer city right now, the rest of us may be witnessing the birth of a new kind of genre blockbuster helmer -- the anti-Michael Bay, perhaps, in that he guiltlessly eschews dwelling on things like character and story, but not to the point of ruination. Rather, to salvation. For Travolta fans at the very least
It's also quite enjoyable, thanks largely to Morel's very willingness to play loose with logic. And that's the only way the film could work with the whack performance that John Travolta turns in as Charlie Wax, super-spy and crazy-man extraordinaire. After years of forgettable and similar roles, he has finally given us a character that can stand alongside the likes of Vincent Vega, Tony Manero, and in terms of pure brainlessness, Vinnie Barbarino.
Which isn't to say that Wax is a dummy. No, he's certainly the kind of guy you'd want on your side if you were to find yourself in Paris on the wrong side of a drug ring/terrorist plot. Or something like that, for the plot of From Paris -- scripted by Adi Hasak and producer Luc Besson -- is fairly incomprehensible. Not in that it's terribly complicated, but incomprehensible in the sense that the viewer's mind very quickly switches off all reason and common-sense circuits once the first chase scene/gun battle/faceless henchman massacre gets underway.
Jonathan Rhys Meyers is James Reece, an alternate-reality take on his Chris Wilton from Match Point who rather than murdering Scarlett Johansson (five-year-old spoiler!) went American and became a low-level government agent in France. Bucking for a promotion to the James Bond big leagues, Reece is hampered by his domestic leanings -- he not only has a girlfriend, Caroline (the suitably smoking Kasia Smutniak), but he also lives with her and actually loves her. (SPOILER WARNING for real this time!) Of course, any great spy only becomes great at what he does after the woman he loves turns out to be a double-agent, or dies, or both. Though Caroline seems like a really nice girl. Really.
Shortly after his arrival in France, Wax teams up with Reece who sees this joint mission as the perfect chance to finally elevate himself to the big leagues. But only if the bald, earring-wearing, wisecracking, trigger-happy Wax doesn't get them both killed first with his penchant for shooting dozens first and asking no questions later. He's also prone to making Pulp Fiction references, something which would be nigh-on unforgivable in any other film than this one, which really takes almost nothing seriously.
So From Paris is ultimately a buddy-cop movie, and is pretty mechanical in that sense. But again, the Travolta performance is just too good to care about anything else. When we first meet him, he's in the middle of a diatribe against, in his words, "a self-important, American-hating, frog leg-eating, snail-sucking, mutherf*$king, c*#ksucking bureaucrat." Or, a French customs agent -- take your pick. Travolta has a ball with such outbursts for a good hour and a half, and the viewer will, too, if they're willing to go along with it.
Rhys Meyers plays the straight man to Travolta, though he's compensated for his trouble by getting more of an emotional through line in the film. And Morel, the third star of the film, proves that the success of Taken was no fluke and that while the diehard Dune fans may be entering ulcer city right now, the rest of us may be witnessing the birth of a new kind of genre blockbuster helmer -- the anti-Michael Bay, perhaps, in that he guiltlessly eschews dwelling on things like character and story, but not to the point of ruination. Rather, to salvation. For Travolta fans at the very least
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