Lethal Pulp Die-Hard - with a twist
John Travolta cuts loose and delivers in ‘From Paris with Love’
By Carl Kozlowski 02/04/2010
Sure, you’ve seen it all before: some nebbish who’s never experienced a moment of danger in his life finds himself thrust into life-threatening situations after meeting an adrenaline-junkie cop or spy. The two proceed to bicker and banter for the next two hours, offering viewers laughs and thrills without reinventing the wheel.
Bruce Willis has starred in loads of these. The “Lethal Weapon” series wasn’t too far off the basic concept. But there’s hardly a genre more entertaining than an action-comedy taking place amid exotic locales — and the new film “From Paris with Love,” starring John Travolta as a bad-ass CIA assassin named Johnnie Wax, who’s forced to team up with a mild-mannered embassy employee , is one action extravaganza that definitely delivers.
“Paris” kicks things off nicely by showing the dual life experienced by James Reese (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers), who spends his days as a personal aide to the US ambassador in France, an existence in which he’s mostly planning travel logistics and handling paperwork for his boss. By night, or whenever the CIA decides to call him secretly, he is a low-level operative for the spy agency — until he abruptly gets the call one day to team up with Wax to block an assassination attempt on an American official attending a Parisian conference.
Soon he’s racing through 48 hours of mayhem across Paris in an effort to prevent the killing by Arab terrorists attached to a crime ring. In another genre tradition, he quickly learns that he can’t trust anyone in his normal life to truly be on his side.
But what makes all this a real blast is the fact that “Paris” is done so well, with some of the best hands in the business running the show. French action master Luc Besson (“The Transporter” series, “Diva,” “The Professional” and countless other hits) wrote the story and Pierre Morel directs with the pedal-to-the-metal, high-speed ferocity of his prior film, “Taken,” a worldwide smash at this time last year.
In both “Taken” and “Paris,” Morel’s choice of villains is refreshingly straightforward. Even as most Hollywood action films in the Age of Terror ridiculously posit any group of humanity other than Muslim radicals — even bringing back ex-Soviets! — as the prime threat afflicting their heroes, both “Taken” and “Paris” matter-of-factly address the reality that there’s plenty of Middle Eastern baddies to go around too. Viewers responded viscerally to “Taken,” knowing that there was an underlying authenticity beneath the surface menace. By no means are Muslims expected to be the villains in every movie, but on the other hand, don’t be so ridiculous as to rule them out either.
“From Paris with Love” has a few jolting surprises, but mostly its buoyant spirit comes from the other end of the human emotional spectrum: not from dark menace but rather the sheer kinetic thrill of finding another challenge or double-cross waiting around every corner. Its two leads bring zest to what might have been tired roles, with Travolta sinking his teeth into the material and chewing it with relish, a constant swagger, hilarious lines and ever-bigger weapons at his perpetual disposal.
Rhys-Meyers is a little more mellow, humane and relatable — the guy the audience will relate to as he evolves from everyman to virtual superhero. Following higher-pedigree roles in projects like Woody Allen’s “Match Point” and Showtime’s royalty drama series “The Tudors,” he clearly has fun here cutting loose.
It’s a feeling audiences will share, and hopefully will result in further adventures for Johnnie Wax and his protégé.
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