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Sunday, February 7, 2010

MOVIE REVIEW
From Paris With Love

Blood, Guns, Bullets And Eiffels Of Travolta

John Travolta as Charlie Wax in Pierre Morel's "From Paris With Love".   Lionsgate

By Omar P.L. Moore/PopcornReel.com
Sunday, February 7, 2010

One year and one week ago Pierre Morel's "Taken" exploded onto American silver screens as a snappy, direct and blunt action drama that took few prisoners.  Mr. Morel again gets straight to the point in his latest film, "From Paris With Love", which plays mostly as an exercise in pulpy gun-toting yahoo-ism.

The film makes no bones about being a "Training Day" replica, minus the serious acting that resulted in Oscar gold for Antoine Fuqua's 2001 film.  John Travolta fires up the same kind of hyper-wired extravaganza in "Paris" that Nicolas Cage did in last year's "Bad Lieutenant: Port Of Call New Orleans"

Mr. Travolta, last seen in 2009's worst film "Old Dogs" and the sub-par "The Taking Of Pelham 123" plays Charlie Wax, a break-the-rules-to-get-the-justice kind of American government operative, trying to prevent a terrorist attack during an African AIDS Prevention Conference.  Jonathan Rhys-Meyers plays James Reese, a green CIA operative who shepherds Wax around Paris.  There will be lots of bumps, bullets, bruises, blood and bodies before all is said and done.  Many of those bodies will be dead, others will be alive and kicking.

"From Paris With Love" is nothing at all without Mr. Morel's sharp-eyed talents for directing.  He has an innate talent for staging and throwing everything on the table, no-holds barred.  Yet this new film suffers from a lack of real plot -- instead, it is a vehicle hewn solely from (and designed strictly to showcase) Mr. Travolta's histrionics, many of which are downright hilarious.  The theatrics however, are an attempted diversion from a screenplay (by Adi Hasak, based on Luc Besson's story) yielding few fresh ideas.  Even the most hardened action junkies in the audience won't be fooled by Mr. Morel's ambitions or the film's intentions.

While Mr. Travolta chews through the scenery faster than a sugar-starved fiend chews through a pack of Juicy Fruit, Mr. Rhys-Meyers looks as if he is reading Mr. Hasak's script for the first time.  Mr. Hasak probably won't have appreciated that, for the actor can be embarrassing to watch at times here.  There's little urgency in his work, even in scenes where the circumstances are exigent.  It's one of Mr. Rhys-Meyers' poorest performances, but is that saying much when that performance comes in an action film?

Boisterous, bombastic and brittle, "From Paris With Love" is relentless and unremittingly empty. 

With: Kasia Smutniak, Richard Durden.

"From Paris With Love" is rated R by the Motion Picture Association Of America for strong bloody violence throughout, drug content, pervasive language and brief sexuality.  The film's duration is one hour and 35 minutes.  In English language with occasional French language and English subtitles.

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Read more movie reviews and stories from Omar here.

Read Omar's "Far-Flung Correspondent" reports for America's pre-eminent Film Critic Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times - here





   

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