From Paris With Love

Director: Pierre Morel
Starring: John Travolta, Jonathan Rhys Meyers and Kasia Smutniak.
Distributor: Hoyts
Runtime: 92 mins. Reviewed in Nov 2011

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Rating notes: Strong violence and coarse language

Reese is promoted to team up with Wax and increasingly he is drawn into Wax’s chaotic drug-related world, where Wax takes himon violent, killing sprees. The screen is literally filled with weapons of individual and group destruction, and the plot-line offers only thread-bare justification for their use. The first half of the movie isabout the violent dismantling of a drug operation. The real plot, which is about planned terrorism, is not revealed till half-way through the movie, but by then the body count is so large the story-line of the film could go anywhere.

Drug chiefs are killed, so too are the Police who come to help, and nearly everyone meets a violent end as Wax impulsively kills anyone he suspects. Borrowing from the title of the Bond-classic, “From Russia with Love”, the movie avoids completely the style of that film, and substitutes in its stead the heady action of Chinese action movies. The romantic interest is supplied mostly by Reese’s fiancée, Carolina (Kasia Smutniak). She is not the person Reese thinks she is. Travolta is over the top in his characterisation of Wax. He gives his role an almost bizarre, mad-cap flavour that even exaggerates what we might have seen in movies like “Pulp Fiction”. Reese bonds to Waxand is stimulated by the excitement of his partnership with him, but he is drawn inevitably to the action of killing, which he hasn’t done before. There is not a great deal of character development all round in this movie. The scripting is poor, and it is the excitement level of the film that aims to carry the day, with nearly all of the action being fuelled by violence. There is no redeeming morality. Violence against others is the order of the day; drugs are a necessary part of staying alive (even of maintaining alertness, as Wax argues); and sex is easy and totally accessible. Women are treated particularly badly in the movie.

For those who like fast action pieces at almost any killing-cost,the movie will entertain. Despite the frenetic pace of the movie,Travolta manages to bring a periodic buzz to his hyper-active role. Hismoments of madness are punctuated by some moments of sanity as he triesto look after Reese. The action hardly ever stops, but there is originality to some of the action sequences. The car-chasing sequence on the freeways of Paris has some wonderful aerial photo-shots that enhance the drama of the chase. However, the Director of this movie, Pierre Morel, who gave us the intelligent “Taken”, never lets his film rise above Travolta’s exhibitionistic performance.

In what might have been an intelligent action-comedy, the movie goes off the rails as the temptation to “splatter” blood takes over, but it does occasionally achieve a raw edge of excitement. However, cinema-goers should not go to this movie in any way expecting it to bea travelogue of Paris. Most certainly, it is not.