Review: From Paris With Love

From Paris with Love has all the elements of good-old brainless action thriller a Luc Besson producer credit, a shouty bald John Travolta and plenty of cars and guns for good measure. But somehow these elements don't mesh together well enough at the end of the day what we're left with is a film that, if it didn't have Travolta's name on the credicts, would probably have ended up going straight to DVD. For an actor of the calibre of Jonathan Rhys-Meyers his role is very limited, as the main character he has to anchor the action as he becomes involved with Travolta's unfortunately named Mr. Wax but a lot of the time he just ends up reacting to what's going on without having much to do himself apart from playing a little chess now and again. Travolta meanwhile should be better than this, he was one of the better things about last year's patchy remake of The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3 but here he just splurts out cliche after cliche even reviving his old Royale with Cheese line from Pulp Fiction.

Another problem I had with the film was its inherent racism. Even though the film is set in Paris, therefore you would expect the villains to be French, instead they are mainly Chinese or Muslim stereotypes. I don't think this has much to do with the story but instead I feel it would confuse the film's target teen white male audience to see two white guys fighting and so presents them with two different skin colours so they know who they have to root for. The film also skirts over issues of drug abuse and terrorism and uses them purely as tools for advancing the plot rather than making a comment on either of them. At the end of the day this doesn't have the merits to be an entertaining action film or the fun factor to be the next Crank or Death Race. Instead we just have an old tired story with an old tired leading man who should know better at his age.