Reviewed by Annlee Ellingson
(February 2010)

Directed by: Pierre Morel
Written by: Adi Hasak
Starring: John Travolta, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Kasia Smutniak, Richard Durden

It was just a year ago that “Taken” opened, surprising moviegoers with a bad-ass turn by Liam Neeson and the industry by debuting at number one and ultimately grossing $145 million. Unfortunately, director Pierre Morel’s follow-up shares nothing with its predecessor other than, perhaps, genre, though “From Paris with Love” has a lighter touch.

Where “Taken” reinvented Neeson as an unassuming action hero capable of unexpected violence, “From Paris” attempts to reimagine John Travolta as a potty-mouthed soldier of fortune who’s not only stock but dated. Where Neeson’s character had a clear, if simple, objective (to rescue his daughter), Travolta’s has an ambiguous and convoluted directive — to break up a drug cartel (I mean, terrorist cell; I mean, assassination plot). Where “Taken” led us to an underworld little-seen on film (human trafficking), “From Paris” careens among clichéd villainy (again, drugs, terrorism and assassinations). French multihyphenate Luc Besson was behind both movies – then co-writing the script, now pitching the original story idea — but that’s not so surprising, given the unevenness of his entire career.

“From Paris with Love” — a title, by the way, that has no bearing on anything that happens in the movie — centers on James Reese (Jonathan Rhys Meyers), a personal aide to the U.S. ambassador in France who runs errands for the CIA on the side. Finally, he gets his big break with a senior-level assignment that, basically, entails chauffeuring his new “partner” Charlie Wax (Travolta) on a 48-hour job that tears apart the City of Lights. How his secret-agenting fits in with his diplomatic duties or why he feels free to share what should be clandestine ops with his French fiancée Caroline (Kasia Smutniak) are never explained.

Wax and Reese are meant to be a franchise-founding odd couple. With a shaved head, hoop earring and leather jacket, Wax is a shoot-first-ask-questions-later rule-breaker, while efficient, methodical chess player Reese operates strictly by the book. Rather than igniting sparks, however, the pairing reduces Rhys Meyers to throwing his hands in the air, both literally and figuratively, and Travolta to shoot-’em-ups and fistfights that aren’t remotely original or interesting while actually uttering things like “yeah, baby” and “come to daddy” and “hoss.”

One can forgive projects assembled less for their plot than for their concept or style or action choreography (see Morel’s first film, “District B13”), but “From Paris with Love” fails to deliver on any of these fronts, lacking even the basic storytelling that would keep the audience apprised of what drugs have to do with terrorists or an assassination plot and why we should care about the target or event where it’s scheduled to take place — you know, what “24” does to a fault week in, week out.

Photo (left to right): John Travolta, Melissa Mars and Jonathan Rhys Meyers; photo by Rico Torres