From Paris With Love

My Rating: 1.5/4

John Travolta is earning his increasing reputation of being a good actor that is always put in weird roles. Like in "The Taking of Pelham 123", he played a crazy guy with a gun. Now, in "From Paris With Love", he's playing a very similar role. The plot centers around James Reese(Jonathan Meyers), a personal aide to the U.S. Ambassador in France. But, his dream job is to be an agent for the C.I.A. . So one day, he's put on a mission for such an organization with his highly-skilled, balled-headed killing Machine partner, "Wax"(John Travolta) to stop a terrorist attack.
Now, the plot is certainly interesting. But, does it deliver? The clear answer I can give is "Nope". I just wasn't really liking the film. The best thing about it is probably the acting. But even that doesn't qualify as "outstanding". But it still was pretty good. Nothing seemed fake, but nothing seemed to be at the level of the performances by Morgan Freeman in "Invictus". Or Tim Robbins in "The Shawshank Redemption". Or especially Morgan Freeman(again) in "The Shawshank Redemption". As for the action, it's certainly entertaining. Travolta pulls off some crazy fighting "manuvers" that usually result in quite a few dead badguys. From things like shooting while hanging upside down or to droppping a bomb on top of a car as soon as the bad guys reach it, it's crazy. But, all the same, it feels senseless. Not much of a point to it. The movie just seems to go on and on, without much of a purpose. But hey, at least it only has a length of an hour and a half, which is very short. One thing that really killed the movie was that it failed at hitting one of its targeted genres. It tries to not just have action, but be a thriller as well. But, it fails. It's totally predictable. When I watch thrillers, I like to have my brain guessing the whole way through, but never being even remotely certain of what comes next. That quality was shown to the max in films like "Lakeview Terrace"(2008) and "Salt"(2010). My grandmother figured out the film's most "shocking" revelation within five minutes of watching it. And that's just about all she watched! But, when all is said and done, "From Paris With Love" had entertaining action, good acting, a predictable story, but overall mainly just fails. Let's hope this is the last love letter we get from Paris.
Starring: John Travolta, Jonathan Meyers Director: Pierre Morel