From Paris With Love Movie Review
If you’re looking for a popcorn spy thriller with a fast pace action and an irreverent tone, From Paris With Love delivers. But don’t expect it to say anything meaningful about post-9/11 American aggression or sense of entitlement.
John Travolta is surprisingly good as the low level CIA agent who gets partnered with an out of control specialist. His trigger-happy character keeps a running tally of the number of people he kills.
John Travolta
John Travolta delivers a fun performance in this movie. He’s dynamic and badass as rogue CIA agent Charlie Wax, who browbeats French customs agents and has no patience for prissy diplomats. He’s paired with bookish assistant to the ambassador James Reese (Jonathan Rhys Meyers), who dreams of becoming an agent himself.
While the premise is predictable, the movie has plenty of twists and turns that keep it interesting. From Paris with Love also features plenty of action and explosions.
Besson and director Pierre Morel have crafted an American macho fantasy with From Paris with Love. The film stars John Travolta as the maverick and unreliable Charlie Wax, a rogue terrorist hunter with a shaved head, goatee, and pirate earring who loves to say “motherf–er.” He’s matched with James Reese (Jonathan Hrys Meyers), a bookish assistant to the ambassador to France who wants to become an agent himself. The two blast their way through the city, with a dizzying body count that includes fresh corpses tossed down a spiral staircase and landing with a bump.
Jonathan Rhys Meyers
Jonathan Rhys Meyers is a talented Irish actor who appeared in high-profile films like Bend It Like Beckham and Oliver Stone’s Alexander. He also starred in Showtime’s hit series The Tudors as King Henry VIII. He gained international fame after playing bisexual glam rocker Brian Slade in Todd Haynes’ Velvet Goldmine. He later portrayed Dracula in NBC’s TV miniseries and Big Bad Valentine Morgenstern in the dark Luc Besson film Match Point with Scarlett Johansson.
In From Paris With Love, he plays Charlie Wax, a rogue American spy with a shaved head and matching beetle brows. He’s a lot of fun to watch as he cackles and badmouths his way through this movie’s blood-soaked mayhem. Trying to play straight man to Travolta’s freight train of a performance is a thankless task, but Meyers acquits himself well. He’s a fine shot and can hold his own in a breathless car chase on a Parisian boulevard. He also starred in the 2007 music drama August Rush.
Directed by Pierre Morel
From Paris with Love is a wild and crazy action movie that has a lot of fun. The film is not the best, but it is entertaining enough to make it worth watching. It has a good story and great acting from John Travolta and Jonathan Rhys Meyers. However, the film does push the characters and story a bit too far.
From a director known for his fetishistic attention to style, From Paris With Love wallows in a kind of empty-headed machismo. Its key attraction is seeing John Travolta cackle and bad-ass his way through the role of Charlie Wax, a gonzo CIA agent with a shaved head and a beetle brow who loves saying “motherf–er.”
While he’s no Sean Connery, he can still carry off the flamboyance that makes this kind of movie fun. And Rhys Meyers does a solid job of playing an agent at the bottom of the CIA’s ranks who doesn’t understand the fine art of diplomacy.
Produced by Luc Besson
John Travolta, who stars as maverick CIA agent Charlie Wax, is the film’s best asset. He’s having the time of his life spouting first-rate one-liners and destroying bad guys with unbridled gusto. Despite the film’s hammy acting and predictable plot, he makes it fun to watch.
Another big plus is the action. The film contains lots of gunplay, fast cars and explosions. Although the movie is preposterous, it’s a lot more entertaining than last year’s Taken, which was basically a meathead revenge flick with no heart.
The filmmakers behind From Paris With Love, Pierre Morel and Luc Besson, have worked together before on the edgy French drama Leon and the surprise action hit Taken. However, they fail to bring that same sense of urgency to this mediocre spy thriller. The film is overstuffed with action scenes, but they are largely unexciting and repetitive. Also, they lack the underlying intelligence of Taken. The only truly interesting element in this film is the use of real religious extremist suicide bombers as villains.
