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Pierre Morel is an action director we need to keep an eye on. In the span of two years he’s
given us two of the finest throwbacks to 80’s Action in recent years. Taken, his first movie
filmed predominately in English, was a brutally honest and topical actioner featuring a
seething Liam Neeson performance, and it dealt with the contentious topic of human
trafficking. Its grim tone and European underbelly locations is what distinguished it from
other no-brainers from this epoch. While not as perceptive as the Bourne films, Taken was
undoubtedly influenced by that groundbreaking trilogy. Stylistically, they bare similar scars.
Morel has given us another fine example of brisk, no-nonsense, no-brainer action, only this
time
it’s in the form of a buddy flick. The most successful buddy franchise to come out of
Hollywood is the Rush Hour films, which are essentially a modern take on the Lethal
Weapon series, albeit a tame PG-13 alternative. The most recent spoof on the genre came
in the form of Hot Fuzz in 2007, which was just brilliant. That said, there seems to be a
resurrection of the 80’s Action star vehicle with Stallone climbing his way to the top again
with The Expendables and the fifth instalment of Rambo, and with Kevin Smith’s upcoming
action/comedy starring Bruce Willis and comedian Tracy Morgan in Cop Out, Lethal Weapon
5 in pre-production, and Bad Boys 3 in development, it appears the buddy flick is getting
revived, too.
With From Paris with Love, Morel tackles both star vehicle and buddy actioner, and with a
badass and bald John Travolta at the helm as an unorthodox CIA agent, this actioner is very,
very satisfying. Forget about Jonathon Rhys Meyers because he simply can’t compete with
Travolta’s maniacal energy, and while his character serves as the backbone of the narrative,
he’s undermined by Travolta’s towering presence in every scene that they share. Travolta,
much like Nicolas Cage, plays ‘over the top’ like no other actor in the business. If you’re a
Travolta fan as much as I am, you’re going to relish his performance here because it’s
unabashedly unhinged. Morel has clearly given him free reign with the role, and the result is
so effective that you couldn’t imagine anyone else playing Charlie Wax, except maybe
Nicolas Cage – John Woo’s Face Off is an excellent example of this.
Like Taken, From Paris with Love unfolds at a break-neck pace, and it’s taut, topical
screenplay is what makes it especially good given its genus. Rhys Meyers plays James Reece,
a rising CIA operative who’s given the unflattering task of chauffeuring Travolta’s loose
cannon around Paris in search of a terrorist cell. Shootout after shootout is punctuated by
the proverbial one-liner, and bit by bit the two agents find themselves deep in the world of
Islamic extremism, where one of them must confront their greatest fear and make the
ultimate sacrifice.
As a straight out action film, you could do a lot better than From Paris with Love. Watch
any John Woo film and you’ll see what I mean. As a buddy flick, again, there are better
examples out there like Walter Hill’s 48 Hrs, the first two Lethal Weapon films, and
definitely Hot Fuzz. To draw comparisons to Morel’s other recent throwback, From Paris
with Love’s action sequences, while most certainly bloodier, are nowhere near as furious
and brutal as those depicted in Taken. The action and gunplay here is much more
flamboyant, dazzling, and unrealistic, so if you can accept the film’s more reckless stance –
given the fact that it is a buddy actioner at heart – then you’re probably willing to make a
few concessions.
There’s absolutely nothing new here, so why am I recommending From Paris with Love?
With the exception of a few expertly handled scenes, namely an early sequence where
Travolta is plugging bad guys off screen while Rhys Meyers, who’s trailing behind him and
inching his way up a spiral staircase with a vase full of cocaine, dodges his victims like enemy
gunfire, and Travolta’s Pulp Fiction in-joke, where he recycles his “Royale with Cheese”
quip while gorging on a Quarter Pounder, Morel’s film is a full-tilt, topical Euro buddy
actioner. That’s it. Hopefully Luc Besson, who produced both Taken and From Paris with
Love (and The Transporter films), will keep churning these bastards out because there’s
definitely a huge portion of filmgoers out there who love this shit. Like me, they tend to be
white Caucasian males between the ages of 16 and 50.
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