DVD review: From Paris with Love ***

From Paris with Love

***

Stars: John Travolta, Jonathan Rhys Meyers

Director: Pierre Morel

Rated: R

Runtime: 92 minutes

Action/crime/thriller

James Reece has an enviable life in France complete — beautiful home, stunning girlfriend and good job as an aide to the U.S. Ambassador.

But he also has a secret second job as a low-level operative for the CIA and dreams of the day he can see some action as a fully-fledged agent.

He gets his chance when he takes an assignment to drive a senior agent around Paris on an undisclosed ­mission. But the agent, Charlie Wax (John Travolta), is a trigger-happy loose ­cannon and Reece soon finds himself riding along on a white-knuckle killing spree through Paris’s underground as Wax tries to stop a ­terrorist attack.

To make matters worse, Reece has mysteriously been made a target of the same criminals they are ­trying to bring down and the wild Wax may be his only hope of survival.

The story was penned by Luc Besson — writer and director of Leon and The Fifth Element — but you’ll have seen it all before.

The plot is predictable — although there is a semi-decent twist at the end — and is packed with clichés.

There is Lethal Weapon-style mismatched buddies — a shoot-first, ask questions later maverick teaming with a by-the-book straightman — a string of ethnic stereotypes yet another post 9/11 terrorist theme.

Sadly the movie does not make any serious points to go with its subject matter.

Travolta is the highlight as the wise-cracking Wax and he has some witty, fast-paced dialogue and a few good one-liners, including a reference to Pulp Fiction when he raves about a “royale with cheese”.

It’s just a shame the nod to Tarantino’s classic — along with the title — only serves to remind you that this type of thing has been done before… and better.

Travolta’s action and fight scenes are entertaining but we simply go from one shoot-out or car chase to the next without any real semblance of story to keep you interesting. The one-dimensional characters don’t keep you engaged either.

But this movie isn’t about story, it’s a dumb fun ­popcorn movie. It lets itself down at the end though with a hypocritical finale about love being better than violence — after spending an hour-and-a-half showing you how cool it is to kill people and blow things up.

Worth seeing for Travolta, who is the kind of unhinged yet charismatic bad boy he played in Pulp Fiction and The Taking Of Pelham 123.