From Paris With Love (Pierre Morel) 2010

Taken was not a good movie; let’s just be honest here.  The plot is bland, the supporting characters are non-existent, and overall did nothing new for the genre.  Now before you guys jump down my throat for being unfair, just because it is not good doesn’t mean it wasn’t very fun.  Morel understood exactly what we wanted and he delivered.  He gave us an entire movie of Liam Neeson f*cking up people’s sh*t.  We don’t ask for any more or less and Morel gave us as much.  By the same token, Morel delivers in the same way with John Travolta and From Paris With Love.

The plot is about James Reece (Johnathan Rhys Meyers) who is kind of the pencil pusher type for the Intelligence Agency.  Reece is looking to become a field agent and his one chance is to chauffeur top agent Charlie Wax (John Travolta) around the city.  Wax is tasked to take down a drug operation/terrorist cell and leads a path of destruction around the city.

As I said Morel gives us exactly what we want out of John Travolta and that is completely off the wall camp.  And oh boy do we get that.  Hell after 20 minutes we have Travolta rolling through Paris strapped with guns and a giant vase full of cocaine.  That is just awesome and it fits with my image of him during his Battlefield Earth phase of his life.  Most of this movie his Travolta killing people and chewing enough scenery to sh*t drywall for a year.

Like with Taken the rest of the movie is rather uninspired.  If I have a gripe it is with the role Meyers plays.  I understand he has to play the straight man to Travolta’s over the top caricature but he takes the term “killjoy” to a whole new level.  He makes Marge Simpson act like Courtney Love.  It seems like you could replace every one of his lines with “WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH  WAAAAAAAH  WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!”  We should eventually root for this guy, not want him to shut the f*ck up.

Does this movie do anything new?  No.  Is this movie necessarily anything you need to rush out for?  Not really.  But I still enjoyed this movie a lot.  If you want to see Travolta chewing scenery with a sh*t eating grin, killing endless waves of baddies and spewing more curse words than a group of sailors then you will like this movie.