From Paris With Love

From Paris With Love is pornography for the National Rifle Association. I don’t think that’s an accident because reviewing this film is not unlike what a review for a pornographic movie would be like:

...we meet a couple of one-dimensional characters, there is bad dialogue with unforgiveable double entrendre, there is a razor-thin plotline, and then every ten minutes or so the “good stuff” happens. More bad dialogue, more scenes with no intent of developing the story and then in another ten minutes, more “good stuff”

I put “good stuff” in quotes because much like a porno, whether it really is good stuff or not is in the eye of the viewer. In this movie, the “good stuff” involves Charlie Wax, played by a bald and goateed John Travolta, killing bad guys like he’s getting paid by the corpse. The body count made me feel like I was watching somebody play Grand Theft Auto rather than watching a major motion picture. But I get the feeling director Pierre Morel (Taken, 2008) knows he has nothing more here than a hollow shoot ‘em up, so he may as well get his money’s worth.

If only the audience could say the same.

Before I go on, I want to debunk something I’ve been reading on the boards and have been hearing for years. Defenders of this movie and others like it chastise critics for being too hard on what is supposed to be merely a popcorn movie. As an action movie, they believe it is not supposed to hold up to any form of critical analysis and anyone who does so is a pointy-headed academic type who should stick to watching “art” movies.

Let me state unequivocally that people who hold this point of view are ill-informed at best, but most likely, are just morons. Two of the best movie-going experiences of my adolescence were Lethal Weapon (1987) and Die Hard (1988). These had every bit of shoot-the-bad-guys enjoyment as the current crop of action movies. What made these movies great was the filmmakers used plot, story and character development as a frame on which to hang the action set-pieces. We genuinely cared what happened to Martin Riggs and John McLane. That’s what created the suspense. Those movies shone under critical analysis and they are the gold standard for all that follows in the genre.

Therefore, it should come as no surprise that From Paris with Love fails miserably because there is no plot, story or character development to speak of. In the opening scenes, we meet James Reece (played by Jonathan Rhys Meyers), the assistant to the American Ambassador to France who moonlights as an aspiring special ops spy. After completing a routine mission which is seemingly beneath him, he gets the call to step up to the big leagues. He is to pick up his new partner at the Paris Airport and assist him in whatever needs to be done. At the airport we meet Charlie, who shows us he’s cool by being loud and defiant to the French Customs officers who are detaining him. Charlie wonders how they can mistreat an American after they saved France’s bacon in not one, but two world wars. What did I say about porn for the NRA?

This launches the buddy cop portion of the film, and here is where the wheels simply fall off. One major reason is that I don’t know who the main character is. It sets us up with James (clever name for a wannabe spy), but as soon as Charlie enters the film, he completely dominates it. This relegates the guy we are supposed to care about into supporting role territory. This could be okay except that Charlie nothing more than a one-dimensional caricature of an action movie hero.

There is an attempt to portray James as someone who dreams of being a big-time spy but has a hard time (literally) pulling the trigger when it is crunch time. The only problem is that the way is played out at the end is cringe-worthy. It is so bad, you almost wish they hadn’t tried. Without giving away too much, it involves James trying to sweet-talk a suicide bomber out of detonating. Need I say more?

The other fatal flaw with this film is the complete absence of any type of villain. Here is the Roger Ebert rule with this genre – the action-suspense movie is only as strong as the “bad guy”. Again, think of Die Hard as the classic example. To this day I can’t see Alan Rickman without getting the chills just a little bit. Here, there isn’t any one character vying to be the villain. And the one person who gets portrayed in the role of antagonist comes off as silly as they do predictable.

The movie has taken a lot of ribbing for having the John Travolta character say he has to have a “Royale with cheese” whenever he is in Paris. I think that was entirely appropriate for the movie. It is intended as a clever wink to Pulp Fiction, but I think they stumbled ass-backwards into one piece of symbolism that actually works. This movie is a lot like a quarter-pounder. When you are experiencing it, you might convince yourself you are enjoying it, but ultimately, all it does is leave you unsatisfied and craving a real meal. This movie makes you long for the action and character development we saw in Pulp Fiction. The title (a not-so-subtle nod to the Bond franchise) makes us wish we were watching the fun and impressive action sequences of a James Bond film. And the attempts at action hero cool lines clang like Rasheed Wallace’s three-point attempts when they are supposed to sound as clever and spontaneous as the lines shot out by Bruce Willis in Die Hard.

From Paris With Love; I know Die Hard. I grew up on Die Hard. You are no Die hard!

Circumstances Under Which You Should Watch This Movie: It’s the year 2021, you are home alone with the television on Peachtree TV and they are running this movie in the middle of the afternoon. Shoddy construction results in the sudden crumbling of your house leaving you trapped under heavy debris while miraculously the television is still functional. The remote is now 20 feet away and to retrieve it would require chewing off your own leg. Under these circumstances, I would suggest watching From Paris With Love.