movie review from paris with love

From Travolta with CGI

John Travola in "From Paris With Love."

Pauline Kael has already reviewed this movie in her book Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, and it only took her the title. I could go through my usual vaudeville act about chase scenes and queasy-cams and Idiot Plots, but instead I’d like you to join me in the analysis of something that increasingly annoys me.

Imagine we are watching “From Paris With Love” on a DVD with a stop-action button. We look at an action scene all the way through. John Travolta stars as Charlie Wax, an American Mr. Fix-It with a shaved head and goatee, who has been sent to Paris on a mysterious assignment. Not mysterious to him, mysterious to us. It involves Asian drug dealers and/or terrorists from the Middle East. Doesn’t matter who they are or what they do, because their only function here is to try to kill Charlie and his fall-guy partner James Reese (Jonathan Rhys Meyers).

OK. We’re on the sofa. We look at the scene. We take a second look. We focus on Travolta. This is an athlete. His reflexes are on a hair trigger. He can deal with several enemies at a time. He can duck, jump, hurdle, spin and leap. One slight miscalculation, and he’s dead. He doesn’t miss a beat. He’s in superb condition, especially for a guy whose favorite food is Cheese Royales. That’s a little joke reminding us of “ Pulp Fiction ,” and the last thing you should do is remind the audience of a movie they’d rather be home watching.

Now we go through the scene a frame at a time. We don’t miss much in the way of continuity, because it’s pretty much glued together a frame at a time. We see a dizzying cascade of images, but here’s a funny thing: We don’t see Travolta completing many extended physical movements, and none involving any danger. The shots of him involve movement, but in bursts of a few frames, intercut with similar bursts of action by his attackers. There is no sense of continuous physical movement taking place within a defined space. No overall sense of the choreography.

I hasten to say this is not criticism of John Travolta. He succeeds in this movie by essentially acting in a movie of his own. The fight construction is the same with most modern action movies. In past decades, studios went so far as to run fencing classes for swordfights. Stars like Buster Keaton , Douglas Fairbanks Sr. and Errol Flynn did their own stunts and made sure you could see them doing them. Most of the stunts in classic kung-fu movies, starring such stars as Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan , really happen. Sure, they used camera angles, trampolines and wires, but you try it and see how easy it is.

CGI makes that unnecessary. The stunt work is done by computers and the editing process. I fear that classic action sequences would be too slow for today’s impatient action fans, who have been schooled on impossibilities. The stunt driving done in such chase landmarks as “ The French Connection ” and “ Bullitt ,” where you could observe real cars in real space and time, has been replaced by what is essentially animation.

I mention this because last week I saw a good Korean thriller, “ The Chaser ,” and its best scene involved a foot chase through the narrow streets of Seoul by two actors who, you could see, were actually running down streets. In modern actioners, the only people who work up a sweat are the editors.

Anyway, that’s what I had on my mind. As for “From Paris With Love,” it’s mostly bang bang and not kiss kiss; as an actress once asked Russ Meyer : What’s love got to do with it?

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

John Travolta as Charlie Wax
Jonathan Rhys-Meyers as James Reese
Richard Durden as Ambassador
Kasia Smutniak as Caroline
Bing Yin as Wong

Based on a story by

Directed by.

Pierre Morel

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From Paris with Love

In Paris, a young employee in the office of the US Ambassador hooks up with an American spy looking to stop a terrorist attack in the city. In Paris, a young employee in the office of the US Ambassador hooks up with an American spy looking to stop a terrorist attack in the city. In Paris, a young employee in the office of the US Ambassador hooks up with an American spy looking to stop a terrorist attack in the city.

Pierre Morel
John Travolta
Jonathan Rhys Meyers
Kasia Smutniak
285 User reviews
193 Critic reviews
42 Metascore

Top cast 36

Charlie Wax

James Reese

Ambassador Bennington

Foreign Minister

(as Chems Eddine Dahmani)

Chinese Punk

Foreign Minister's Aide
Airport Security Official
Customs Official

Head of the Delegation
Embassy Security

All cast & crew
Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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Did you know

Trivia Kelly Preston : As Reese calls his girlfriend from the Eiffel Tower cafe, Kelly Preston can seen sitting behind him. She is wearing sunglasses and seated at a table with two children.
Goofs During the car chase Wax leans out of the passenger side window of the Audi, aiming his rocket launcher across the roof towards the terrorist's car, which travels on the driver's side. In several shots it is clearly visible, that the Audi has a glass sun roof. This type of roof can always be opened with Audi. So rather than leaning at high personal risk out of the passenger's side window, it would have been the logical thing to do for Wax to open the sunroof which would have also provided a much better field of fire and be at the same time be far less risky.

FBI agent Charlie Wax : This motherfucker hates Americans so much, even though we saved his country's ass in not only one world war but two, he still won't let me through with my cans!

Connections Featured in Siskel & Ebert: Edge of Darkness/When in Rome/Saint John of Las Vegas/Legion/Tooth Fairy/44 Inch Chest (2010)
Soundtracks J'ai Deux Amours Music by Vincent Scotto Lyrics by Georges Koger and Henri Varna Performed by Madeleine Peyroux (c) EDITIONS SALABERT (p) 2004 ROUNDER RECORDS CORP. With Courtesy of Universal Music Vision

User reviews 285

Mar 25, 2010
How long is From Paris with Love? Powered by Alexa
February 5, 2010 (United States)
United Kingdom
United States
Paris Rực Lửa
Paris, France
Grive Productions
See more company credits at IMDbPro
$52,000,000 (estimated)
$24,077,427
Feb 7, 2010
$52,844,496

Technical specs

Runtime 1 hour 32 minutes
Dolby Digital EX

More to explore

'Love' American Style: In Paris, Travolta Takes Names

David Edelstein

In From Paris With Love, John Travolta plays a CIA agent sent to Paris to stop a terrorist attack. Jonathan Rhys Meyers (right) plays his diplomat partner. Rico Torres hide caption

Director: Pierre Morel
Genre: Action
Running Time: 92 minutes

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Media no longer available

'Dinner Party'

After the 2003 invasion of Iraq, France became the most outspoken European critic of "American exceptionalism" — the idea that the U.S., with its cowboy diplomacy, can and should act unilaterally, without regard for quaint international law. So it's quite a surprise that one of France's most successful filmmakers, Luc Besson, has made a new career producing and co-writing Paris-set action movies that celebrate take-no-prisoners American machismo.

Take last year's Taken, directed by Besson's former cinematographer Pierre Morel; it starred Liam Neeson as an ex-CIA spook whose teenage daughter got snatched in Paris by Albanian sex slavers. Since the French were all apathetic or corrupt, it fell to Neeson to beat up, torture, and take out wave after wave of Albanians, Arabs and other scummy thugs. The fantasy might have been primitive, but Taken was the filet mignon of meathead-vigilante movies, with Neeson stripped down to pure, righteous, patriarchal American genius.

Now, Besson and director Morel are back with an even bigger and badder American macho fantasy called From Paris with Love, starring John Travolta with a bald dome and a wispy goatee as Charlie Wax, a gonzo but — as it turns out — unbelievably proficient terrorist hunter. Like Neeson in Taken, Travolta's Wax has no patience with prissy bureaucrats or diplomatic niceties, so naturally Besson and Morel pair him with prissy diplomat James Reece, played by Jonathan Rhys Myers. There's nearly an international incident when Wax arrives at the airport and browbeats a French customs agent into letting him carry energy drinks into the country — cans that, as he reveals to Reece in the car, have a lot more kick than caffeine.

Travolta is revitalized. Sure, he's beefy — he isn't the first actor to spring to mind in connection with lightning reflexes. But he's souped-up and limber and elated by his own Zen prowess, and the choreography and editing of his fights scenes are so expert that I never detected the substitution of stuntmen. Like Taken, From Paris With Love moves at warp speed — it's barely 90 minutes, a nice change from most bloated modern action pictures — and there isn't a wasted shot. In scene after scene, hordes of terrorists turn into blood-spurting pinwheels that hit the ground the instant you manage to breathe out. Your exhalations become gasps of amazement.

Morel will inevitably be compared to director John Woo, but I think he's better. He has fewer mannerisms and a keener eye; his fastest, most kinetic shots flow together like frames in a flipbook. When he interrupts that flow for a snatch of slow motion, you see the lyricism of a warrior at full extension or the floppy-limbed contortions of a body flung to its doom.

But Morel's drollest scene in From Paris With Love represents the art of taking away. Travolta bursts through a door at the top of a circular staircase while Rhys Myers waits below; the camera stays with him as one body after another sails or bounces or crunches past. Travolta's Wax teaches Rhys Myers' Reece that diplomacy is fine, but there's no substitute for guts and style.

It can be argued that From Paris With Love is simple-minded and formulaic, and that Besson and Morel are pandering to an American audience that can't win the War on Terror in reality and so clings to juvenile fantasies. I might have argued that, too, if the film hadn't made me feel so elated.

Maybe because they're French, Besson and Morel can celebrate the archetype of the gonzo American warrior without guilt — or the kind of grim psychological frame at work in Kathryn Bigelow's great The Hurt Locker. They make it so clear why everyone is seduced by that archetype — even those of us who wish the would-be Charlie Waxes weren't, in the real world, often as hapless as Charlie the Tuna.

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From Paris With Love Reviews

The most underdeveloped character... remains Paris. Why set a movie in the City of Lights if you aren’t going to exploit it for everything it’s worth? The movie could’ve been called “From Cleveland with Love” and no one would’ve known the difference.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/4 | Aug 22, 2023

The velocity is hypnotic and Pierre Morel is the magician in this sleight of hand. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Oct 19, 2022

There's never a break to build character, a pause to appreciate a joke, or cessations in the franticness to allow for explanations.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/10 | Nov 29, 2020

Essentially a CIA action thriller with your rather run-of-the-mill buddy flick angle attached to it.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4.0 | Sep 8, 2020

A crime not just against cinema but all of humanity, it's been a long, long time since a movie made me this mad.

Full Review | Original Score: .5/5 | Sep 12, 2019

From Paris With Love is dopey, slightly predictable and probably a little excessive. It's also a lot of fun.

Full Review | Original Score: B | May 10, 2019

Aside from a generic plot twist and a little clever banter between the two fellas, From Paris With Love fails to deliver the excitement to which the trailer alludes.

Full Review | Original Score: C | Sep 11, 2017

This thing is fun. Dumb fun. Overdone fun.

Full Review | Aug 25, 2017

The goatee-sporting, shaven-headed Travolta throws himself around with gusto, and the action is bruising and bloody, but to a viewer on this side of La Manche, the film's casually racist attitude to its non-white characters is shocking.

Full Review | Aug 2, 2012

...a workable premise that's squandered from the word go...

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Oct 21, 2011

If you like a violent, silly, frenetic style of film you'll find plenty to enjoy here.

Full Review | Original Score: B- | May 6, 2011

Suddenly I'm nostalgic for Battlefield Earth.

Full Review | Original Score: 0.5/5 | Apr 4, 2011

It's stupid, it's unoriginal, and it makes very little sense... but that's not all bad.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/5 | Feb 3, 2011

Travolta stuffs it up, again.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.0 | Dec 25, 2010

Lacking any compelling style, attitude or storytelling.

Full Review | Original Score: C- | Jun 21, 2010

A fun, over the top action movie that doesn't care that it's stupid and over the top.

Full Review | Original Score: B | Jun 20, 2010

Not even the pleasures inherent in watching John Travolta mug it up as a gonzo CIA operative bent on breaking things and killing people... are sufficient recompense for sitting through this by-the-numbers slog from the fevered brain of Luc Besson

Full Review | Original Score: 78/100 | Jun 16, 2010

Morel's underrated eye and knack for making kinetic movement rhythmic and easy to follow elevates Besson's run-of-the-mill, mismatched-buddy thriller into a propulsive, enjoyably Eurotrashy entertainment.

Full Review | Jun 15, 2010

It's both a classic mismatched buddy action movie transplanted to Paris and a French idea of an American action movie abroad.

Full Review | Jun 11, 2010

With a screenwriter formerly of the Israeli Airborne Defense Forces, this is the kind of sour anti-terror travelogue where you're set up to howl on cue when bearded or burka clad Arab insurgents are preemptively shot in the head or blown to smithereens.

Full Review | Jun 2, 2010

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DVD & Streaming

From Paris With Love

Action/Adventure , Drama

Content Caution

In Theaters

February 5, 2010
John Travolta as Charlie Wax; Jonathan Rhys Meyers as James Reece; Kasia Smutniak as Caroline

Home Release Date

June 8, 2010
Pierre Morel

Distributor

Movie Review

If super-secret spy agencies took out want ads, their copy would probably emphasize a few critical elements of the job: the qualifications, the likelihood of travel, the 401(k) plan. And it would certainly mention the job’s most self-evident requirement: That being a secret agent means doing lots of work in secret.

James Reece gets that. The hyper-efficient diplomatic assistant spies in his spare time—swapping out license plates, sticking bugs in embassies, that sort of thing. By definition, it’s thankless work—not the sort of stuff that earns him “employee of the month” awards. But, then again, public accolades for spying sort of defeats the purpose, no?

Still, James longs to move up the espionage ladder and, after a particularly boring bug-planting operation, he begs his boss for a promotion. So his unseen boss decides to give him a shot—pairing him with his unnamed agency’s best agent, Charlie Wax.

Now, when I say best in connection with Wax, I’m using the term loosely. Wax is a “top secret agent” in the same way Lady Gaga is a “decorum expert” or Nancy Grace might “ask a few quiet questions.” Wax is as subtle as the Vegas Strip, as subdued as a nuclear meltdown. He can’t even order dinner or park his car without killing people. And he bellows his own special catchphrase to surviving evildoers, just to make sure they remember his super-secret name: “Wax on, wax off!” he crows to them, as if Mr. Miyagi might be waiting for them back at their super-secret base.

But his employers love him because he always gets his man, solves the case and protects the free world—or whatever’s left of it when he’s done. When they give him his neon plaque that reads “Super-Secret Agent of the Month,” Wax will likely post the ceremony on YouTube. ‘Cause that’s just how this secret agent rolls.

Positive Elements

Terrorism is bad. Wax and James fight terrorists. Which, in this limited context, makes them “good.” Sorta. Furthermore, James does seem to regret the wanton killing involved in fighting terrorism, and he feels particularly bad when innocent police officers get blown up in a booby-trapped apartment building.

Spiritual Elements

The terrorists in question seem to be largely of Middle Eastern descent and, while religion is never mentioned, one terrorist admits to James that she found a cause she can believe in—an ideology that helps make sense of everything and gives her a sense of peace. The suggestion, of course, is that the terrorists are Muslim extremists, but no one ever explicitly says so.

Wax leads a tongue-in-cheek séance during a casual dinner: We hear him say, “Rise, Mr. Ghost!”

Sexual & Romantic Content

James seems to be living with his girlfriend, Caroline. In the first scene we see them together, Caroline has James turn around and look away while she changes clothes. (We see her back.) But later the two begin kissing and giggling—a prelude to sex, it’s implied.

“I woke up with my share of Carolines,” Wax tells James. And as if to prove it, he hires a prostitute and takes her up to an apartment, where the two have noisy sex behind a closed door. When Wax exits the room, he makes a show of zipping up his pants.

Wax also thrusts his pelvis in a taunting manner to his adversaries and suggests that Parisian women are less “uptight” than those elsewhere. Characters make references to prostitutes and crude allusions to various body parts. Realistic—nude—mannequins take fire during a fight.

Violent Content

The next time Wax comes to town, Paris may change its nickname from City of Lights to City of Yikes. He kills most of the restaurant staff during his first dinner there. And when some thugs don’t like the way he parks his car, he kills them, too. He’s named his favorite gun (“Mrs. Jones”) and has piled up as many bodies as AIG has piled up bonuses. For a while, Wax even keeps a running tally of the people he kills—he reaches 26 about midway through the film and we suspect that the only reason he stops keeping track is because, well, he can’t count any higher.

These are not bloodless little Maxwell Smart-style kills, by the way. Wax shoots folks in the leg just to watch ’em fall, cracks necks, stabs jugulars and blows up a few. In one kill-filled scene, we see adversaries plunge down the middle of a circular staircase—sometimes bouncing off rails and stairs on the way down. He shoots a woman in the head during a dinner party, and we see gore spurt out of the exit wound. Those kinds of spurting wounds are not too terribly unusual here, for the record. From Paris With Love is not so much a movie as it is an M-rated video game, where the victims really are little more than notches on Mrs. Jones’ barrel.

James mostly leaves the killing to Wax. And when he’s confronted with bloodshed, he seems to have a more developed conscience. At one juncture, for instance, he holds a gun on a terrorist but doesn’t pull the trigger. This being the kind of movie it is, though, the terrorist does, blowing out his own brains and sending a spray of blood across James’ face.

James is at one point forced to shoot a female terrorist in the head. And he more willingly beats one drug dealer to a bloody pulp and threatens the life of someone else just to get his cell phone charger—acts Wax gleefully encourages.

Crude or Profane Language

Close to 75 f-words and 30 s-words. Other curses include “a‑‑,” “h‑‑‑” and “d‑‑n.” God’s name is misused a handful of times; once it’s paired with “d‑‑n.” Jesus’ name is abused once.

Drug & Alcohol Content

A film of cocaine dusts this film. Drug trafficking is a critical part of the plot, and for much of the movie James carts around a vase full of the stuff. They try at times to buy and sell it—a way to burrow into Paris’ seedy underworld, it seems—and eventually dump the whole vase in the middle of a thug-choked apartment complex.

But for his partner, coke isn’t just a convenient tool. Wax snorts some of it himself and makes James sniff it, too—telling him that if he doesn’t use, he won’t let him be his partner anymore. Audiences then see James impaired: He has trouble understanding what Wax says and appears to get angry more easily.

Wax, James and others drink wine.

Other Noteworthy Elements

Secret agent Wax? The only secrets Wax manages to keep are from his partner. At first, James just thinks Wax has a personal score to settle with someone. Then Wax tells James they’re trying to take down a massive drug cartel. Later, it turns out that the whole drug thing was only part of the picture and they’re really gunning for a terror cell. Why does he keep James in the dark? We’re never told, so we’re left to surmise that it’s just because Wax is a jerk.

Perhaps From Paris With Love is not as bad as it seems.

Perhaps its makers were making a subversive satire based on, say, how American tourists are seen by Europeans. Yeah, that’s it. Then Wax’s propensity for being loud, obnoxious and buying cheap baseball hats that say “I (heart) Paris” might have some deeper meaning. And the fact that Wax blows up cars on a crowded Parisian highway might suggest that Americans don’t treat French culture with the respect it deserves. And Wax’s ever-climbing body count might be a metaphor for the American fondness for to-do lists.

Do I believe this is what was meant? No. Hardly. Rather, my musings represent a painfully inane delusion—not too different, perhaps, from the delusions this film’s makers must have experienced when they thought From Paris With Love was fit to be shown to an audience. Anywhere. It’s a film so devoid of wit and merit that the extras Wax “slaughtered” early on might consider themselves fortunate: In the obligatory screenings, they can watch their death scenes, applaud themselves for their acting prowess and walk out of the theater to make better use of their time.

I wish I could’ve.

Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.

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Review: from paris with love.

The title is ironic, as Paris is transformed from City of Love to City of Bloodlust, and it portends a series of role reversals scattered throughout the film.

After District B13 , what with its thrillingly abstract sense of movement, manipulation of action tropes, and socio-cultural fixations, it was tempting to announce Pierre Morel as the true heir to Luc Besson B-movie kingdom. Then came the shaky Taken , a rote revenge narrative that was unquestionably emboldened by Morel’s conflation of the psychic and the physical as a man struggled with his conscience on his empathetic road to save his daughter from kidnappers. Now we have From Paris with Love , which finds the director settling for routine and going through the motions: A U.S. ambassador’s personal aide, James Reese (Jonathan Rhys Meyers), yearns to be part of special ops, and after impressing his boss with his commitment and quick skills (when his chewing gum fails him, he ingeniously uses a stapler to stick a bug to the bottom of a desk), he receives a crash course in blowing shit up from his new partner, special agent Charlie Wax (John Travolta).

The title is ironic, as Paris is transformed from City of Love to City of Bloodlust, and it portends a series of role reversals scattered throughout the film, none more fascinating than James’s girlfriend popping the question because she feels he never will. There are some surprising betrayals, and a comic-grotesque climb up a spiral staircase toward a Chinese druglord’s lair is prismatically staged, with Wax dealing with his enemies like an ogre eats mutton, tossing bodies over his head as if they were discarded bones, but the action sequences otherwise feel recycled from better films ( Face/Off comes naturally and repeatedly to mind), and unlike District B13 and Taken , nothing ever feels at stake, or tested, other than James’s caginess about shooting to kill— and of his own volition.

Meyers is credibly grave, most notably in a scene where he catches his reflection in a mirror and assesses the blood splatter on his face, but he seems unhinged from the project. Morel, who once seemed interested in expressing the reality of street life throughout Paris’s subcultures, settles for unimaginatively and unquestioningly linking all of the city’s minorities in a web of crime from cocaine-dealing to terrorism. But the real insult here may be that Wax’s behavior never scans as a comment on America’s post-9/11 aggression and sense of entitlement. It’s all jokey, empty-headed signs and bluster, what with the man’s meant-to-be-badass facial hair, insatiable lust for hookers and cocaine, a one-is-too-much Karate Kid reference, and an expected Pulp Fiction nod that rather nicely sums up what’s wrong with From Paris with Love : It’s more cheese than royale.

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From Paris With Love: movie review

John Travolta stars in ‘From Paris With Love,’ a comedy-thriller-action movie that falls short on all three counts.

By Peter Rainer Film critic

Feb. 05, 2010, 7:02 p.m. ET

What movie features John Travolta as a gunslinger with a startling hairstyle who craves a “Royale with cheese” – i.e., a McDonald’s Quarter Pounder with cheese?

If you answered “ Pulp Fiction ,” you’re only half right. In the new thriller “ From Paris With Love ,” Travolta, playing an unscrupulous CIA special agent, sports a shaved head. He also has a nasty goatee. Despite the obvious in-joke references to “Pulp Fiction,” Travolta’s leather-jacketed, bling-festooned look here mostly reminded me of his biker baddie in “ Wild Hogs ,” not a movie I wish to be reminded of.

Without Travolta’s Charlie Wax cavorting about Paris shooting off his guns – and his mouth – this movie would be much the poorer. It’s pretty poor anyway. I realize logic doesn’t play a central role in movie narratives anymore, especially in thrillers, but “From Paris With Love” lowers the bar, and then some. This is the kind of movie where the only reason things happen is because it says so in the script. Example: When an American diplomat in a motorcade is told that a security threat necessitates a change of itinerary, she haughtily vetoes the idea – and runs right into an ambush. In these kinds of movies, common sense is always trumped by big explosions.

Wax’s counterpart is James Reese ( Jonathan Rhys Meyers ), a personal aide to the US ambassador to France , who has a lissome French girlfriend ( Kasia Smutniak ) and moonlights as a low-level CIA errand boy. Wax’s arrival is Reese’s first senior-level assignment, and before long, the two are waist-deep in corpses. (“Wax’s playbook is a bit unorthodox,” Reese is warned.) But since this is a movie about squelching a terrorist plot, director Pierre Morel , working from a screenplay by Adi Hasak based on a story by the omnipresent Luc Besson , has no qualms about upping the carnage count. His film is simultaneously timely and sleazy. The timeliness is intended to buy off the sleaziness. (I’m not buying.)

Even if you’re not very good at figuring out plots, “From Paris With Love” won’t crease your thinking cap. When Reese’s too-perfect girlfriend slips her late father’s wedding ring on his finger, you can see what’s coming a kilometer away. The big tip-off: She proposes to him . This is just not the way things are done in France.

Rhys Meyers is always better when he’s playing heels, as in “ Match Point ” and TV’s “The Tudors ,” and here he’s just too nice . I realize the niceness is meant to contrast with Wax’s shoot-first-ask-questions-later belligerence, but the counterpoint feels forced, as if the filmmakers were setting up a new “ Lethal Weapon ”-style buddy franchise. Just what we don’t need.

Amid all the mayhem, there is Paris in all its faded-light glory. Is the movie worth seeing as a travelogue? Only if you are (a) a masochist, (b) a terrorist, or (c) desperate. Grade: C- (Rated R for strong bloody violence throughout, drug content, pervasive language, and brief sexuality.)

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From paris with love.

Common Sense Says
Parents Say 7 Reviews
Kids Say 2 Reviews

Common Sense Media Review

Disappointing thriller pours on the violence.

Parents Need to Know

Why Age 18+?

Abundant and often, including "bitch," "s--t," and "f--k" (and variations like "

Plenty of gunfights, with characters spraying bullets all over the place, their

Cocaine rains down to the ground after undercover agents shoot up a ceiling; one

A man picks up a prostitute and then proceeds to bed her. There's no nudity, but

Logos for cars.

Any Positive Content?

Six words: Be careful what you wish for. In this film, a worldly diplomat discov

Although neither James nor Charlie is particularly virtuous (nor, really, is any

Abundant and often, including "bitch," "s--t," and "f--k" (and variations like "motherf---er"). Also, "goddamn" and "for Christ's sake" used as exclamations.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Violence & Scariness

Plenty of gunfights, with characters spraying bullets all over the place, their targets slumping on the floor, dead and bloodied. In one scene, people are thrown from great heights and shown hitting the ground. Both good and bad characters train their guns on people at point-blank range, sometimes pulling the trigger. Also lots of explosions, both on purpose and otherwise.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Cocaine rains down to the ground after undercover agents shoot up a ceiling; one of them collects it in a vase, from which they later snort small amounts. Also some social drinking.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

A man picks up a prostitute and then proceeds to bed her. There's no nudity, but much moaning is heard. A couple kisses in one scene. The girl strips down and changes clothes while her boyfriend has his back turned.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

Positive messages.

Six words: Be careful what you wish for. In this film, a worldly diplomat discovers that not everything is as it seems, and that what he has longed for all his life -- a big promotion -- may not measure up to the dream. But those disappointments pale in comparison to true heartache. Also, the movie's story reinforces the problematic idea that violence is a good problem-solving device.

Positive Role Models

Although neither James nor Charlie is particularly virtuous (nor, really, is anyone in this movie...), they do manage to gain each other's respect through hard work and loyalty. James manages to find compassion for someone who betrayed him because of love (though he does hurt her, too).

Parents need to know that this overly elaborate action thriller is filled to the brim with gunfights, blood, and bullet-spraying sequences. It attempts to be more complex than the average shoot-'em-up, but the violence is so unrelenting that it becomes numbing. There's also lots of rough-and-tumble language (including "s--t" and "f--k"), scenes with drug imagery and use, and a sequence in which a man picks up a prostitute and has sex with her (no nudity shown, but plenty of moaning). The movie's political themes oversimplify present-day concerns about security. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Parent and Kid Reviews

Parents say (7)
Kids say (2)

Based on 7 parent reviews

What's the Story?

James Reese ( Jonathan Rhys Meyers ) has an important job at the American embassy in Paris as an assistant to the ambassador, but he'd rather be a CIA agent. He's performed low-level jobs for the agency before, but nothing too exciting until he gets called on to pair up with Charlie Wax ( John Travolta ), a veteran agent with an unorthodox approach to the job. Right from the start, James isn't sure that he and Charlie make a good team, but there's no time to second-guess. A terrorist plot is unfolding that threatens national security.

Is It Any Good?

This movie's over-the-top and muddled, and discerning audiences aren't likely to feel the love. Director Pierre Morel clearly attended the school of buddy-cop action films: FROM PARIS WITH LOVE has nearly all the ingredients of an edge-of-your-seat thriller: carefully choreographed sequences, a torrent of fast-paced fights and chases, suspense. What's lacking? First, a plot that, at the very least, isn't so annoyingly convoluted as to distract from enjoying the movie in the first place. And chemistry between the two leads, which is passably awkward at best and tin-eared at worst. The partnership between James and Wax simply doesn't fly -- a problem considering its metamorphosis is somewhat essential to the story.

As the rogue Wax, Travolta impresses with his enthusiasm. But we never once forget that we're seeing Travolta playing "bad." As for Rhys Meyers -- his American accent is full of holes, with Britishisms leaking out everywhere. Though he's a fine actor, he doesn't seem fully comfortable playing this role. But, really, the problem's the plot, which panders to today's terrorist fears. And though film buffs may appreciate the Quentin Tarantino reference made by, of course, Travolta, it's yet another awkward moment in an overly violent, nuanced-starved enterprise.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about the violence in this film. Do you feel emotionally affected by watching the gunshots and deaths? How is this experience different from what you would feel like if you saw these things in real life?

Charlie Wax appears to perform his duties with little emotional response. Is this necessary in his line of work? What makes him and James similar? Or different? What more relatable jobs require some emotional distance?

Movie Details

In theaters : February 5, 2010
On DVD or streaming : June 8, 2010
Cast : John Travolta , Jonathan Rhys Meyers , Kasia Smutniak
Director : Pierre Morel
Inclusion Information : Female actors
Studio : Lionsgate
Genre : Action/Adventure
Run time : 95 minutes
MPAA rating : R
MPAA explanation : strong bloody violence throughout, drug content, pervasive language and brief sexuality
Last updated : May 13, 2024

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Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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From Paris With Love Review

26 Feb 2010

From Paris With Love

Don't let the title mislead you. This is not a romantic comedy in which the Eiffel Tower figures picturesquely. No, the title pays homage to James Bond for a semi-wacky, semi-serious spy wheeze in the long line of odd-coupled buddy actioners.

It’s from the production stable of Luc Besson, who came up with the story and doubtless fancies it to follow his Transporters, District 13s and Taxis as another fella-friendly franchise. Hence the directorial gig went to former Besson cinematographer-turned-director Pierre Morel, who rocked it out with District 13, made Liam Neeson an action man in Taken and knows what he’s doing very well enough to have bagged the new big-budget adaptation of Dune.

The plot is simultaneously simplistic and hard to follow, but almost incidental to the testosterone fumes. Taking down a Chinese drug ring leads to encounters with ethnically assorted crime gangs as secret agent man Wax (John Travolta) connects the dots to a Middle Eastern mastermind extremist and a suitably crazed climax. Thus we zoom through peppy, culturally-appropriate set-pieces, from shoot-’em-ups, bazookas, bombs and martial-arts tiffs, to a soupçon of free-running (although Travolta is too chunky for more than a rooftop-scampering nod to that) and an exciting spot of vehicular mayhem on the Paris Périphérique.

The character appeal is in the teaming of Travolta’s OTT, shaven-headed wild ’n’ crazy guy (whose craving for a “Royale with cheese” is one jokey reference to his CV) with Jonathan Rhys Meyers, who, in a reversal from his usual flamboyant turns, is engaging as the strait-laced, methodical guy who plays chess, speaks Mandarin, canoodles with a beauteous, fashion designer Euro-fiancée (Kasia Smutniak) and somewhat naively doubles being the super-efficient personal assistant to the clueless US ambassador with a spot of espionage.

None of which has prepared him for the blood-spattering antics of his new partner-slash-maniacal mentor, although he’s a surprisingly good shot for a glorified office boy.

Movies | 26 02 2010

Movies | 11 02 2010

Movies | 07 02 2010

Movies | 27 01 2010

Den of Geek

From Paris With Love review

Our second take on the new John Travolta action flick From Paris With Love. But will Rupert like it as much as Ron did?

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Last year, the Liam Neeson-starring sleeper hit Taken divided the public and critics alike. Was it a throw back to 80s action pantomime, a morally repugnant and overtly racist excuse to see a white man ethnically cleanse the Parisian ghettos, or an ironic allegory on America’s ‘shoot first, ask questions later’ foreign policy – all wrapped up in a hyper stylised bow for the ‘yee-ha!’ dunderheads?

An artist laughing at their audience is always a sure sign of artifice, but writer/producer Luc Besson (who’s had previous with this sort of thing) pulled Taken through with a combination of slick direction from Pierre Morel, an intense performance from Neeson and sense of visceral catharsis just silly enough for the audience not to feel ashamed of themselves for enjoying it. In short, he got away with it.

Pulling the same trick twice, though, shows both arrogance and contempt.

Why the rant? Well, quite simply, From Paris With Love is exactly the same film as Taken , except with John Travolta overacting instead of Neeson growling and seasoning of buddy comedy thrown into the pot. Hold on to your butts, it’s clichés-up-to-eleven time.

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The film opens on James Reece, played by Jonathan Rhys Meyers (an interesting casting choice), a political aid working for the US Embassy in Paris who also doubles as a low level CIA field operative. Nothing glamorous, just switching a few number plates around and planting the odd bug here and there.

He’s a typically smug career guy, a suave dude who sits around drinking fine red wine and listening to excruciating lounge bar jazz. You know the type, instantly hateable. This sentiment is cemented when he woos his girlfriend, Caroline (the beautiful Kasia Smutniak, in her first role outside Italy), with the verbal excrement of, “Why don’t we skip dinner and go straight to desert?” This is the kind of dialogue that only turns up in films, because any girl with half a brain would laugh in your face if you ever tried as fromage-scented a seduction technique. Predictable Schtick 1, Suspension of Disbelief 0.

The action lingers on Reece for a while until John Travolta arrives to excite the adrenal glands as Charlie Wax, a CIA assassin/xenophobic attack dog. Wax – whose death-quip catchphrase is “Wax on, Wax Off.” – has been sent to Paris to kill a lot of foreigners, preferably of the black, Asian and oriental variety. His excuses for this genocide vary, with busting drug dealers, clearing terrorist cells and generally punishing un-American activities being his usual raison d’être. However, the exact nature of his mission is never explained.

Travolta seems resigned to going through the only routine he can now (or at least gets hired for): manic exaggeration and general buffoonery. Looking back through my notes, I see three phrases jotted down to describe Wax: bile spewing, jive taking toad and the Hairy Bikers meets the Hells Angels via a Hare Krishna acolyte, none of which are particularly complimentary.

Wax is meant to be some sort of ADHD force of nature. A man who lives to bag a bad guy then chomp down on a Big Mac (sorry, Royale with cheese), a real patriot. But, and this is From Paris With Love ‘s biggest failing, he’s just like the really brash guy who gatecrashes your party, drinks all your beer and then starts a fight after getting blown out by your girlfriend. A man for whom the term ‘douche bag’ was invented.

For all this excruciating characterisation, the film does have some positives. At least it doesn’t take itself seriously and tries to inject a splash of classic opposites attract buddy humour. There are some interesting set pieces, too, with Reece running round with a replica Ming vase full of cocaine for half the movie, which is pretty cool as far as plot devices go.

Morel’s direction, while very MTV, is sexy, creating a relentless orgy of balletic gunfights and violence. Highly superficial enjoyment, though, and after the sixth shoot out you may find yourself feeling drained.

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My biggest grind with From Paris With Love is the one I raised at the beginning of this review, that I feel like the filmmakers are laughing at their audience. As if they’re like, “These shmucks are so stupid they’ll swallow anything we give ‘um.” And, to be frank, I don’t like that idea. Roland Emmerich does it too, and I got fooled while watching 2012 , thinking it was post-ironic irony, but it’s not. It’s just lame.

From Paris With Love is a grotty little piece of lowest common denominator escapism. The whole ‘turn your brain off and let your eyes enjoy the ride’ is an excuse too often peddled out, so no longer!

No doubt there will be people that enjoy this movie, but my response to them would be this: are you really happy to support a manifesto on ultra-conservative idealism made as a joke to line the pockets of trendy European fashionistas?

Nope, doesn’t sound too appealing.

From Paris with Love Review

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The Thicket Review: A Riveting & Gritty Western Thriller with Superb Actors

The most unexpected cameos in deadpool & wolverine, will smith exits upcoming big-budget action movie.

I grew up on the so-called "buddy-cop" action films that were so popular in the '80s and early '90s. Classic films like the "Lethal Weapon" series, "48 Hours" and "Midnight Run" that set a tone for an entire genre. Well, "From Paris With Love" is not quite as brilliant as those previously mentioned movies but it does deserve credit for being a fairly entertaining film and bringing back a genre long forgotten. It's probably more accurate to compare this film to "The Last Boy Scout" or "Red Heat," neither film is an example of genius filmmaking but both movies have become cult-classics and are beloved by their fans, including myself. I think "From Paris With Love" will have a similar fate and find a strong following on DVD and Blu-Ray in the years to come. It combines just the right amounts of humor and action to be both believable and entertaining at the same time and boasts strong and unusual leading characters.

In addition to the buddy-cop tone of the film, there is also a certain "Training Day" feel to the plot mixed in with the spy-film genre that results in a fresh and somewhat original film. Yes, John Travolta looks absolutely ridiculous (almost like a drag-queen) with his baldhead, goatee and strange attire but that actually all worked and lent well to set the tone for his character's eccentric ways. Travolta's over-the-top performance actually adds a much needed flair of comedy to the film and Jonathan Rhys Meyers does an excellent job of helping the plot move along while leveling off Travolta's performance and keeping him grounded. The plot may be a bit convoluted but in the end it really is good, action-packed, mindless fun. Travolta's character while ridiculous at times is really fun to watch if you don't take him too seriously. Yes he's crazy and no real person in the world would act like that but guess what? IT'S JUST A MOVIE! IT'S NOT REAL! So who cares? It's fun watching the former-Sweathog ham things up and blow things up at the same time. It's just good, wholesome, American fun!

The film begins by introducing us to James Reese played quite well by Jonathan Rhys Meyers ("Mission: Impossible III"). James is a personal aide to the U.S. Ambassador in France and has an enviable life living in Paris with his beautiful French girlfriend, Caroline. But James' real passion is his side job as a low-level operative for the CIA. His tasks consist of dropping off packages or moving cars and he longs to become a bona fide agent and see some real action. While having a romantic dinner with Caroline, James gets the opportunity he's been waiting for ... a senior-level assignment. His task? To guide a fellow CIA agent in from the U.S. through Paris while he's on assignment. Sounds easy, right? Wrong! James soon finds out just how difficult this will be when he meets his new partner, special agent Charlie Wax (Travolta). Wax is an eccentric, baldheaded badass who loves American cheeseburgers. He's also a trigger-happy, wisecracking, loose cannon that's been sent to Paris to stop a terrorist attack. Wax ends up leading James on a white-knuckle shooting spree through the Parisian underworld that has James praying for his desk job again. Along the way the two agents clash but James begins to appreciate Wax's expertise and starts to learn a thing or two about being a spy. However, James soon discovers that he is actually a target of the same crime ring that Wax is trying to bust and this revelation could cause repercussions in his private life as well. Now, with no hope of turning back and no one else he can trust, James turns to Wax who might be his only hope of surviving the next forty-eight hours and staying alive.

The film is directed by Pierre Morel ("Taken") and was written and produced by Luc Besson, who himself is an accomplished director of such contemporary classic films as "Nikita," "Leon" and "The Fifth Element." They collaborated together on last year's hit film "Taken," which Besson wrote. However, the two men first met while Morel was working as the cinematographer on "The Transporter," also written by Besson. While "From Paris With Love" is nowhere nearly as good as the fast-paced, smart, slick and tender at times "Taken," it does have some excellent moments and delivers its fair share of entertainment. Never taking itself too seriously the script is quick and very funny at times, which is helped by Meyer's deadpan strait man and Travolta's tongue-and-cheek performance. Travolta deserves credit here for walking a very fine line, while his performance at times begins to hit the red on the ham-meter he manages to keep the performance down to Earth, for the most part, and his behavior falls in line with the plot and his crazy character. Morel's look of Paris, as a city of love and mystery was breathtaking especially the scenes of the city at night. The action is well done and the tone of the movie has a nice Hitchcock/noir feel to it.

In the end, "From Paris With Love" will not be nominated for any Oscar Awards come this time next year but if you like action and comedy it will keep you fairly entertained for a couple of hours. One thing I found interesting about Travolta's performance was his willingness to go over-the-top and poke fun at himself. We've really just seen Travolta play two different types of roles over the last few years. He's either the badass bad-guy like in "The Taking Of Pelham 123" or the corny middle-aged guy in movies like "Old Dogs and "Wild Hogs." Here he is able to combine both for great effect creating a character that is original and entertaining. There are even a few nods to Travolta's legendary comeback role in Quentin Tarantino's now classic "Pulp Fiction." I had to wonder if the "Royal with cheese" line in this movie was in the original script or added on once Travolta took the role. None-the-less it just adds to the wink-wink fun of the film. "From Paris With Love" is a frivolous, fun movie that reminded me of the action/comedy films of my youth. Is it perfect? No. But it will satisfy most fans of the genre and keep you entertained with Myers and Travolta's lively performances.

From Paris with Love is out February 4, 2010.

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From Paris with Love (2010)

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An action scene from Paris with Love review

Screen Rant's Paul Young reviews From Paris with Love

After last year’s break out hit Taken , I was hoping director Pierre Morel would come out swinging once more with his next film From Paris with Love . After all, it’s based off a story that Luc Besson wrote and it stars heartthrob Jonathan Rhys Meyers (who was fantastic in The Tudors ) and Hollywood action film staple John Travolta. Unfortunately, this film is full of more standard action movie clichés than I could count. I didn’t hate the film but I did find myself yawning and actually got up to use the facilities and wasn’t in a real hurry to get back. Oddly enough, I didn’t miss anything related to the story.

As for the plot, it goes something like this: James Reese (Meyers) is an undercover agent working for some extension of the US government (which is never identified) as a personal aide to the American Ambassador in France. He aspires to be something more than an errand boy, swapping out license plates and planting listening devices and soon gets his chance from “The Voice” on the phone.

His first major assignment is to pick up his new partner, Charlie Wax (Travolta), at French Customs and assist him in his assignment. From there the story goes off the rails and never really gets back on. The pair then go after a Chinese cocaine ring, which somehow leads them to an Indian money laundering outfit which in turns takes them to some Pakistani terrorists. A quick twist here, a couple more clichés there and the movie is over. Oh yeah, and there is a lot of cussing, shooting, things blowing up and a lackluster car chase thrown in for good measure.

The one thing I couldn’t quite understand is why was this set in France? The only French people in the movie are the customs agents and some policemen who get blown up just as soon as they show up on the scene. The good guys are American covert agents, the drug lords are Chinese, the pimps and terrorists are Pakistani and the summit the Ambassador is attending is for Africa. The only landmark shown in the film is the Eiffel Tower and that is literally for one scene and plays no part in the story other than something very minor. There are no mimes, no open markets or no art-filled courtyards. Heck, most of the extras don’t even speak French. This whole story could have easily been set in Thailand, Russia, England or Los Angeles and it wouldn’t have changed the plot one bit.

As for the performances, I was really digging Travolta as the out of control, “my way or the highway” loose cannon on a rampage special agent but it started to get old after about 30 minutes. Travolta is obviously having a good time playing the character and it shows. Ultimately, he is one-dimensional and I found myself getting bored by it. Meyers is no better at portraying his character as a sheepish junior agent who is in over his head and clueless to things going on around him. He also feels his love for his new fiancé is stronger than his duty. Both characters weren’t given much thought and Reese follows Wax around for most of the first act carrying around a big Chinese vase full of cocaine.

Any one or two of these things in the movie wouldn’t normally be enough to make a film ho-hum but the fact that there are six of seven things going wrong, makes it a big letdown. If your girlfriend, for some unexplained reason, doesn’t want to see Dear John this weekend, then I suppose you could watch From Paris with Love instead but really your time might be better spent sharing a milkshake at Johnny Rockets.

Also, for all you Pulp Fiction lovers out there, see if you can spot the nudge-nudge, wink-wink to that film.

From Paris with Love isn’t a complete waste of time but it’s pretty darn close; I’ll just have to wait for Taken 2 for Morel to redeem himself.

From Paris with Love

From Paris With Love is a 2010 action film starring John Travolta and Jonathan Rhys Meyers. The pair play Charlie Wax and James Reese, a US Ambassador employee and an American spy who work together to prevent a terrorist attack in Paris. The film was directed by Pierre Morel and written by Adi Hasak and Luc Besson.

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Movie Review | 'From Paris With Love'

Americans Spark the Gunfire in the City of Light

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By Stephen Holden

Feb. 4, 2010

A conservative estimate of the escalating body count in Pierre Morel’s gleefully chaotic action-adventure comedy “From Paris With Love” is two dozen a day, boasts John Travolta’s trigger-happy character, Special Agent Charlie Wax. But as you watch Mr. Travolta, twirling a weapon in each hand, dispatch the members of a Chinese drug gang in a Paris restaurant and later in a nearby apartment, it could be a hundred or a thousand. In a rare moment of contemplation, Wax remarks that there are a billion more to be disposed of.

This gonzo wild man storms into the movie at a Paris airport, where security refuses to let him enter the country with his precious energy drinks whose containers hide firearms. But with the last-minute intervention of his new partner, James Reese (a mustachioed Jonathan Rhys Meyers), a personal aide to the American ambassador in France, Wax is allowed in.

Winking broadly, “From Paris With Love” leads us back into vintage James Bond territory where fiendish Asian baddies were casually exterminated like so many cockroaches. What’s another billion anyway? In this movie, whose title echoes that of the second Bond film in that endless franchise, the drug dealers are somehow related to the Pakistani terrorists on whom “From Paris With Love,” all but forgetting about drugs, directs its searchlights in its second half. The turning point comes with the smashing of a cocaine-filled vase that Reese has been dutifully toting from place to place.

“From Paris With Love,” Mr. Morel’s follow-up to his B-movie blockbuster, “Taken,” is a really a one-sided buddy movie in which a leather-clad Mr. Travolta, with a shaved head and an earring, camps it up in the Vin Diesel supermacho style. Details in the screenplay by Adi Hasak, based on a Luc Besson story, signal that beneath his facade Wax is really a softie. He goes moony when a recording of “(They Long to Be) Close to You” comes on a car radio, then demands his companions not tell anyone of his weakness. Late in the movie he is also revealed as a killer at the chessboard, as is Reese.

Mr. Travolta so completely dominates the movie that Mr. Rhys Meyers can barely crawl out from under his shadow once Wax appears. Mr. Rhys Meyers’s better moments all occur in early scenes before Mr. Travolta blasts onto the screen. Reese has a seemingly perfect girlfriend, Caroline (Kasia Smutniak), and is the apple-polishing golden boy of his boss, Ambassador Bennington (Richard Durden). A low-level operative for the C.I.A., Reese has cloak-and-dagger dreams that are finally rewarded when he is teamed with the appalling Wax.

I am ashamed to admit that this empty-headed, preposterous, possibly evil mélange of gunplay and high-speed car chases on Parisian boulevards is a feel-good movie that produces a buzz. Even more than “Taken,” a kidnapping drama with the semblance of a heart, “From Paris With Love” wallows in action for action’s sake.

The set pieces are precisely calibrated movements in a symphony of violence with no adagio. There is the scene in which Reese watches spellbound on a circular staircase as bodies plummet past him. During a breathless highway chase Wax hangs out of the car window with a rocket launcher aimed at the green Volvo driven by a terrorist, and you can hardly wait for the detonation.

The soundtrack, in which David Buckley’s beat-driven orchestral score seamlessly mingles with the sounds of gunfire, suggests a hip-hop suite precisely coordinated with Michel Abramowicz’s jiggling, agitated cinematography. In these scenes you lean back, let the action wash over you and feel the caffeinated glow as it seeps into bones. For better or worse, “From Paris With Love” is an effective stimulant.

“From Paris With Love” is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). It has violence and profanity.

FROM PARIS WITH LOVE

Opens on Friday nationwide.

Directed by Pierre Morel; written by Adi Hasak, based on a story by Luc Besson; director of photography, Michel Abramowicz; edited by Frédéric Thoraval; music by David Buckley; production designer, Jacques Bufnoir; produced by India Osborne and Virginie Besson-Silla; released by Lionsgate. Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes.

WITH: John Travolta (Charlie Wax), Jonathan Rhys Meyers (James Reese), Kasia Smutniak (Caroline) and Richard Durden (Ambassador Bennington).

From Paris with Love (France, 2010)

Sometimes, movies aren't about plot and character. Art films can be more about how they look and feel than whether they tell a coherent or engaging story. Musicals can be all about song and dance. And action films can be gauged by how well they mix the adrenaline and testosterone cocktail that movie-goers are expected to imbibe. Such is the case with From Paris with Love , a production that views exposition as a necessary evil and dispenses it as quickly as possible so it can get back to shooting people and blowing things up. The movie is intellectually flat but viscerally involving and keeps the pace at such a consistently high level that it can become exhausting. With its wink-and-a-nod approach, it recalls some of the campier action epics of the 1980s, when icons like Stallone, Schwarzenegger, and Willis strode across the cinematic landscape sowing death and destruction. Everything's fast and furious, the good guys rarely miss, and the bad guys rarely hit.

From Paris with Love comes out of Luc Besson's factory. Besson is the French filmmaker who makes American action films with more verve than Americans. His movies are usually in English and often feature recognizable Hollywood names. In this case, the A-lister is John Travolta who, as a kick-ass hero, is a little out of his comfort zone, but appears to be enjoying it. With a shaved pate, he looks a little like Mr. Clean and acts like a melding of James Bond, Martin Riggs, and Rambo. The screenplay also remembers Travolta's role in Pulp Fiction and plays homage to it with an in-joke that Tarantino buffs will immediately recognize. (Hint: guess the character's favorite food in Paris.)

This is a mismatched buddy film and follows most of the conventions of the genre. It is told from the perspective of the intellectual newbie, James Reece (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers), who is the assistant to the American ambassador in Paris. He's in training to be a secret agent, but his assignments are bland, allowing him to spend his days playing chess with the ambassador and his evenings snuggling with his attractive fiancé, Caroline (Kasia Smutniak). Enter superspy Charlie Wax (Travolta). James is assigned to the profane, violent killing machine as his driver/partner and, before they have known each other for an hour, the body count has started to mount. At first, it appears that Charlie is in France to take out a bunch of drug dealers who caused the death of the Secretary of Defense's daughter. But that's a smokescreen. His real purpose is to eliminate a terrorist cell before the members can go active and move against American interests in France.

The story is far from airtight but it's good enough to get the viewer from Point A to Point B, which is all that's necessary in what would have been a B-grade action flick had it not been for Travolta's participation. In terms of its attitude and pace, I'd compare this to The Transporter (also from Besson) and Crank . Neither film took anything seriously and both were propelled by hard-hitting, no-holds-barred action. That's pretty much what's happening here. There is something that passes for a plot twist and, while I won't reveal it here, anyone who doesn't see it coming isn't paying attention.

Travolta chews the scenery with gusto, seemingly delighted to have a chance to attack this sort of role. Jonathan Rhys-Meyers is buttoned-down, although most of what Rhys-Meyers does, at least until the end, is react (and carry around a vase full of high quality white powder). There's a priceless scene in a spiral staircase in which his job as rear guard forces him to dodge the bodies Travolta tosses from above - it's funny in a macabre sort of way. The chemistry between the two has a little of the Mel Gibson/Danny Glover Lethal Weapon vibe, but it isn't as well-developed. Surprisingly, considering the limited screen time accorded to it, the romance between Rhys-Meyers and Kasia Smutniak is effective. After only a couple of scenes, I accepted these two as lovers. Smutniak, a Polish-born actress, is making her first high-profile film for American audiences.

There's not much more to say about From Paris with Love . Director Pierre Morel generally does a good job with the action sequences, although his "style" borrows heavily from The Matrix and its derivatives and he occasionally becomes too enamored with shaking the camera. This is Morel's follow-up to Taken and, unlike the Liam Neeson thriller, it makes no attempt to capture any kind of realism. It's pure comic book/popcorn action. If that's your kind of movie, it's hard to go wrong with this one.

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Hidden Fortress, The (1962)
Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
Minority Report (2002)
Van Helsing (2004)
Bad Boys II (2002)
Dukes of Hazzard, The (2005)
Pulp Fiction (1994)
Get Shorty (1995)
Civil Action, A (1998)
Old Dogs (2009)
Wild Hogs (2007)
Punisher, The (2004)
Match Point (2005)
Titus (1999)
Alexander (2004)
(There are no more worst movies of Jonathan Rhys-Meyers)
(There are no more better movies of Kasia Smutniak)
(There are no more worst movies of Kasia Smutniak)

From Paris with Love (2010)

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From Paris with Love

Review by brian eggert february 8, 2010.

From Paris with Love is the kind of movie the advertisements call “an adrenaline-packed thrill ride.” But then you watch the movie and realize that it recalls most action movies since the Schwarzenegger and Stallone days—the plot is thin, the volume is loud, and the body count is high. The story involves rookie special ops agent James Reece (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers), who doubles as the assistant to the American ambassador in Paris. For some reason, Reece is teamed with brash American agent Charlie Wax (John Travolta), and together they’re sent to clear a possible terrorist cell. The ultra-violent Wax takes Reece outside of his comfort zone, which causes some ruffles in Reece’s relationship with his fiancée, Caroline (Kasia Smutniak). There are some shrug-inducing twists in the plot, but the unrelenting action moves too fast for the audience to realize how predictable they are.

In the realm of action movie heroes, Charlie Wax exists somewhere between James Bond and Rambo. He’s a killing machine with no tolerance for authority, and yet he’s got an arsenal of neat gizmos and satellite surveillance to assist him. Wax runs about the screen crowing about how cool it is to blow people away, how cocaine and prostitutes are benefits of the trade, and we’re supposed to believe he’s an incorrigible secret government agent. Right. For the role, the grossly miscast Travolta shaved his head and dyed his gray goatee black, and then he reflected on the most over-the-top performances in his career and multiplied them by a factor of ten. Travolta even makes a nod to his role in Pulp Fiction through Wax’s love of the French Quarter-Pounder, the “Royale with cheese.” But instead of reminding the audience of their fondness for the actor, it forces us to question: When was the last time Travolta appeared in a good movie? It’s been a while. A long while.

Balancing out this mismatched buddy movie is Rhys Meyers, whose character does little more than react to Wax’s testosterone-laden methods. Together they’re uneven, but not in that charming way that Mel Gibson and Danny Glover were in Lethal Weapon . These two are more like Tango & Cash —then again, that might be giving them too much credit. Rhys Meyers isn’t the action movie type, which is probably why he was cast. But this otherwise dramatic actor of Match Point and Showtime’s The Tudors fame doesn’t acclimate to his surroundings very well. For Rhys Meyers’ lack of presence, our attention is given to Travolta, and in these conditions, that’s no consolation.

The most underdeveloped character, however, remains Paris. Why set a movie in the City of Lights if you aren’t going to exploit it for everything it’s worth? The movie could’ve been called “From Cleveland with Love” and no one would’ve known the difference. Perhaps the burden rests with the teaser poster, which shows us James Bond-esque romanticism in its imagery and title. No one’s asking for the Eiffel Tower to play a corny major role, but using the scenery beyond drab alleyways and putrid slums may have given the procession of violence more personality.

Since none of the characters are developed enough to care about them, we’re mostly watching for the action scenes. Pierre Morel, director of last year’s Taken , again helms a story by his producer Luc Besson. Once a director himself, Besson ( The Fifth Element , The Professional ) has built a small industry rooted mostly in action movies, some for American audiences, but most of them for his native France. Besson productions like District 13 and the Transporter franchise have helped establish up-and-coming action directors like Morel and Louis Leterrier ( The Incredible Hulk ). So the cartoonish action sequences are enjoyable, even intelligible, though too reliant on a shaky camera. Morel can do much better than this, which assigns the fault to the script. Then again, if you’re the right audience and in the mood for a popcorn-munching actioner, a script won’t matter.

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Movie Review: From Paris With Love (2010)

Movie Reviews
2 responses
--> April 17, 2011

While the title of From Paris with Love may imply that it’s a romantic comedy featuring the Eiffel Tower, the title is in fact a James Bond homage, and the production is a hardcore, no-holds-barred action flick which arrives courtesy of Luc Besson’s production factory. For those unaware, Besson is the French filmmaker who produces American action films with far more verve than American filmmakers themselves. Not long ago, Besson and director Pierre Morel teamed up for the surprise hit Taken , and From Paris with Love marks another Besson/Morel collaboration. But while Taken was a gritty, hard-hitting actioner, this movie is a straight-up cartoon; an exaggerated cocktail of two-dimensional villainy, verbal bluster, mayhem, John Woo-esque action set-pieces starring an over-the-top John Travolta as a cocky government operative tracking down an array of terrorists in the heart of France. Intellectually, the movie is flat as a pancake, but on a visceral level it’s extremely involving. The film knows precisely what it is, and does a damn good job of being it.

The story is at once incomprehensible and expendable, but it’s sufficient to drive the characters from Point A to Point B, which is all that matters in an action flick. In the film, Travolta’s character of Charlie Wax is a profane American killing machine who’s paired up with James Reece (Myers); a mild-mannered aid to the U.S. Ambassador in Paris with large aspirations. By the time Wax and Reece have known each other for a mere hour, the body count has already started to mount considerably. At first, Wax claims he’s taking down a bunch of drug dealers responsible for the death of the Secretary of Defense’s daughter, but his real mission is soon revealed: To eliminate a terrorist cell before the members launch an attack.

After 2004’s District B13 and the more recent Taken , director Pierre Morel has positioned himself as a superior action director. He has a masterful touch when it comes to pace, and From Paris with Love benefits greatly from such exhilarating acceleration. After a slow opening, the film takes off like a champion racehorse once Wax enters the film, as the screenplay by Adi Hasak ( Shadow Conspiracy ) lines up a series of unsavory characters — all of whom are one-dimensional stereotypes, of course — for Wax and Reese to ice during their fast-paced trip around the city. However, the problem is that it takes a little too long for the film to hits its stride. The first 20 minutes are genuinely lousy, even by the admittedly low standards to which the movie was aspiring. In high octane action flicks, the segues bridging the action tend to suck, and From Paris with Love is no exception. As the film establishes James Reece, it’s frankly boring, and the tone is out-of-place when compared to the light-hearted action which pervades the film’s final hour.

Thankfully, after the 20-minute point, the movement of Morel’s direction is enthralling; leaping from location to location, staging shootouts and action set-pieces with a cartoonish quality to match Travolta’s performance. Even if Morel appears to be on autopilot, he nonetheless delivers in each and every set-piece, sending bullets flying all over the place like it’s nobody’s business. As a matter of fact, the action evokes the spirit of John Woo movies. It’s such a relief to watch a modern action flick containing action that has been edited to ensure an audience knows what’s going on at any given time, as opposed to set-pieces that have been cut to incomprehensible ribbons. More pertinently, it’s fantastic to see a contemporary actioner in which bad guys get popped in violent, bloody ways, without the cleanliness of the Hollywood-favorite PG-13 rating. As the action intensifies and the explosions keep getting bigger, one gets the feeling that it’s building to a big climax. However, From Paris with Love fails in its finale — cheesy character interaction and impassioned speeches have no place in such a film as this.

Luc Besson’s films usually feature recognizable Hollywood names, and the A-lister of From Paris with Love is John Travolta who absolutely steals the motherfucking show. Dispersing first-rate one-liners, shooting the hell out of the bad guys and beating the snot out of anyone who challenges him, Travolta truly chews up the scenery with the gusto of a hungry dog attacking a meal — he simply owns the role. He’s the hook — without him, the movie would be ordinary, but with him, there’s always something to enjoy during the film’s slowest moments. As legendary YouTube reviewer Jeremy Jahns said, if Jack Bauer (from 24 ) and Samuel L. Jackson had a child, it would be Travolta’s character here. Meanwhile, Jonathan Rhys Meyers was given the unenviable task of playing the straight man to Travolta. Anyone could play this role, and Meyers never stands out as anything but interchangeable. Still, he’s watchable at least.

From Paris with Love is one of those movies that consists almost entirely of over-the-top action sequences tenuously linked together by a painfully formulaic, by-the-numbers plotline and two-dimensional characters. From this description, it may sound like a brain-dead blockbuster that doesn’t care about how lazy or graceless it is as long as there’s sound and fury to temporarily distract the audience. But what prevents From Paris with Love from hopelessly falling into this trap is a great deal of style, energy and personality. It’s an enjoyable, lively old-school bullet ballet that’s low on CGI, and this separates it from the abominable films of such directors as Michael Bay and McG. It’s nonsensical cinematic junk food at its core, but, like the best junk food, it goes down so well and tastes so good that those with a taste for such things should find it absolutely irresistible.

I'm a true blue fair dinkum Aussie larrakin from Down Under (or Australia, if you're not a fan of slang). Yep, I wrestle crocs and I throw shrimps on the barbie. Movies are my passion. I also post my reviews on Flixster, Listal and MovieFilmReview. I've been writing reviews as a hobby since 2003, and since then my technique has increased big time. I'm also studying Media at University, which helps me develop my writing skills. I am continually commended for my writing from both tutors and peers. On top of reviewing movies, I voluntarily contribute to the local newspaper in the area of music journalism. And I'm a through-and-through gym junkie. Yep, my life thus revolves around peers, studies, movies and exercise. I'm more than happy.

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'Movie Review: From Paris With Love (2010)' have 2 comments

April 28, 2011 @ 2:36 am deals

I wasn’t really impressed with this movie. Not exactly something that John Travolta would do if you’d ask me. Although he is getting older I guess it seems this is the best he can do. Luckily I had some coupons, I didn’t have to spend much.

September 27, 2011 @ 3:13 pm jagbite

I really loved this film, it was interesting, action packed with many twists. It was also really funny and quite crazy in parts. I thought it was one of the year’s great’s

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California Literary Review

Movie review: from paris with love.

Director Pierre Morel’s Disappointing Follow-up to Taken

Somewhere in From Paris with Love , hidden beneath the mediocre action sequences, the meaningless plot and the eerily-familiar “unhinged” performance from John Travolta, lies a really neat idea for an action movie, in which a “realistic” secret agent, whose job consists mostly of planting bugs and maintaining his cover as a personal assistant at the U.S. embassy in Paris, teams up with the kind of secret agent only found in movies, whose job consists mostly of killing dozens of people a day and getting laid. To quote The Simpsons , “They’re the original Odd Couple!” Sadly, Pierre Morel’s follow-up to Taken , one of the best action movies of the last decade, never capitalizes on its high concept, resulting in one of the most disappointing films in recent memory not because it’s bad, although it’s certainly not very good, but because the obvious potential for an entertaining “high octane thrill ride” is squandered at practically every opportunity.

Jonathan Rhys Meyers, giving the best performance of the film, plays agent James Reece, a master chess player and linguist who languishes in espionage banality when he’s not lounging in the arms of his beautiful fiancé Carolina (Kasia Smutniak). He dreams of high profile assignments and finally gets his opportunity when unorthodox special agent Charlie Wax (John Travolta) comes to Paris with a secret mission. Reece is ordered to accompany Wax and follow his orders to the letter, but it quickly becomes clear that when it comes to Wax, “unorthodox” may be synonymous with “certifiably insane.” Is Wax a rogue agent or is there a method to his madness? Will Reece follow Wax’s crazy orders and sacrifice his principles (and possibly the love of his life), or will he jeopardize his career by trusting his conservative instincts? Will these two polar opposites rub off on each other and evolve into a perfect pair of crimefighters, or end up as mortal enemies?

This is the conflict that From Paris with Love establishes at the start of the film, and it’s a dramatically sound one. For a brief period the action on-screen sets off sparks, even though it never fully ignites, because it follows this set-up to its logical conclusions. The film shifts admirably from Reece’s calculated world of leisurely-paced moderation in the first act to the whipcrack outlandishness of Wax’s hyper-edited shoot-‘em-up lifestyle over the course of one of the best scenes in the film, in which the protagonists meet and their contrasting methodologies are perfectly illustrated. But the conflict between our two heroes – the very foundation on which the film is based – swiftly dies as we almost immediately discover that there is no conflict at all. Wax is right and Reece is mostly wrong, which nullifies most of the dramatic tension From Paris with Love has to offer, leaving instead only a meaningless MacGuffin of a plotline involving drug dealers and terrorists that the filmmakers deem so unimportant that they drown out the exposition with a drug-induced sonic stupor. But by the end of the film, that tedious plotline is all that From Paris with Love has to offer, and the final act ultimately sets its heroes off on two separate missions because that’s what the plot demands, even though keeping them apart is the antithesis of the film’s raison d’être.

So with all of the conflict neutralized the audience is left with a series of set pieces, some admittedly more entertaining than others but none terribly thrilling, with only a single telegraphed plot twist to its credit and a climax which does, in the interest of fairness, resolve itself somewhat unexpectedly. Suffice it to say, From Paris with Love does not constitute one of the finer producing efforts of Luc Besson, who over the past decade or so has made himself into a patron saint of action cinema, consistently releasing exciting, stylish and highly entertaining B-movies like the charmingly brain dead Transporter series (although the third one is kind of junk), and occasionally even meaningful dramatic action films like Unleashed and Taken . Alas, From Paris with Love lacks the razor sharp focus of these earlier efforts and never fully commits to its compelling premise. Maybe the comedic aspect of the screenplay got away from director Pierre Morel, who despite brilliant work directing Taken (and charmingly “biz-onkers” work, if you will forgive the technical jargon, directing District B13 ) has never really demonstrated a deft hand at levity. The film is filled with more ideas for comedy than successful jokes, and the action, normally one of Morel’s strong suits, appears to have been hindered by the kind of lightning fast editing necessary to turn an aging John Travolta into a plausible badass.

Structural difficulties, failed attempts at levity and below-par action sequences would be bad enough, but sadly From Paris with Love also has a noticeably sexist undercurrent to its detriment, giving what would normally have simply been a bland meal a genuinely unpleasant aftertaste. Besson makes movies for manly, manly men, this can be certain, but by the end of From Paris with Love the few women who make it out of the movie alive are depicted as humorless “bitches” who are more interested in their own convenience than in the affairs of more worldly men, and the women who don’t make it out alive are, as one might imagine, treated even with even less respect. Frankly, Morel is better than this. Although women always have a rough time in his movies, the female protagonist of District B13 was so strong and independent that it took copious amounts of narcotics – and an armed guard – to overpower her, and although the women in Taken are by-and-large victimized, this of course was the entire point of the film: the horrors of female sexual slavery. Another Travolta vehicle, Swordfish , was arguably the most misogynist mainstream film of the 2000’s, and as mainstream entertainment it’s especially important to call movies like these out on their troubling thematic undercurrents because the genre encourages the audience to mindlessly accept the events onscreen.

So From Paris with Love is problematic at best, providing moments of entertainment interrupted by long stretches of mediocrity, failed dramatic opportunities and unpleasant subtext, and all from filmmakers and actors who have proved themselves superior to this kind of material. In a way it is almost fascinating to watch a film with such obvious flaws, if only to ponder how nobody caught them at some point during production. If this is the kind of film Luc Besson and Pierre Morel are going to give us “with love,” then it may be time to go back to having good old-fashioned cinematic “meaningless sex” instead. The Transporter 4 , anyone…?

From Paris With Love Trailer

William Bibbiani is a highly opinionated film, TV and videogame critic living in Los Angeles, California. In addition to his work at the “California Literary Review” William also contributes articles and criticism to “Geekscape” and “Ranker” and has won multiple awards for co-hosting the weekly Geekscape podcast and for his series of Safe-For-Work satirical pornographic film critiques, “Geekscape After Dark.” He also writes screenplays and, when coerced with sweet, sweet nothings, occasionally acts in such internet series as “Bus Pirates” and “Heads Up with Nar Williams.” A graduate of the UCLA School of Film, Television and Digital Media, William sometimes regrets not pursuing a career in what he refers to as “lawyering” so that he could afford luxuries like food and shoes.

William can be found on both the Xbox Live and Playstation Network as GuyGardner2814, and on Twitter as – surprisingly – WilliamBibbiani.

William Bibbiani is a highly opinionated film, TV and videogame critic living in Los Angeles, California. In addition to his work at the "California Literary Review" William also contributes articles and criticism to "Geekscape" and "Ranker" and has won multiple awards for co-hosting the weekly Geekscape podcast and for his series of Safe-For-Work satirical pornographic film critiques, "Geekscape After Dark." He also writes screenplays and, when coerced with sweet, sweet nothings, occasionally acts in such internet series as "Bus Pirates" and "Heads Up with Nar Williams." A graduate of the UCLA School of Film, Television and Digital Media, William sometimes regrets not pursuing a career in what he refers to as "lawyering" so that he could afford luxuries like food and shoes. William can be found on both the Xbox Live and Playstation Network as GuyGardner2814, and on Twitter as - surprisingly - WilliamBibbiani. Google+

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The film jumps between timelines; in one scene Almut and Tobias argue about her disinterest in having kids, in the next they’re doting over their daughter. Her illness is a constant presence, but the film is edited so that happy moments are never far away, and never feel cheap when they arrive. And there’s a bittersweet question that hangs over all of the shifting chronologies: Would it be better to have “six really amazing months” or “12 really s—ty passive ones” of aggressive treatment that has no guarantee of working?

There’s a charming playfulness in the dynamic between Pugh and Garfield, and it’s echoed in Bryce Dessner’s music, which defaults toward the upbeat and rarely tries to milk the emotion.

Of course “We Live in Time” gets more serious and sadder as the story plays out; after a while, flashbacks start to lose their value and the couple’s ticking clock asserts itself. But it’s balance that John Crowley is after: You can call it Lou Reed’s magic and loss, and you can thank Crowley, Pugh and Garfield for knowing how to deliver it.

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Lily McInerny also stars in this updated take on Françoise Sagan's 1954 coming-of-age story, about a young woman meddling in her father's love life.

By Caryn James

Caryn James

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‘Love’ Review: Thoughtful, Grownup Norwegian Romantic Drama Accounts for Different Emotional Needs

A straight female urologist and a gay male nurse ponder the possibilities of love without sex, and vice versa, in the second part of Dag Johan Haugerud's intimacy-themed trilogy.

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After a blind date with amiable, recently divorced geologist Ole (Thomas Gullestad), a friend of her own best pal Heidi (Marte Engebrigtsen), Marianne bumps into Tor by chance on the ferry home — and is intrigued to learn that the boat is his favoured place for picking up guys. Suddenly, as she recounts her evening to her colleague, she surprises herself with an admission: “I wish I could have had sex with him tonight and never see him again.” To her, the very idea is a tantalising subversion of romantic norms; to Tor, it is the norm.

Yet as Marianne is left pondering the possibilities of one-time trysts — and weighing them up against her conflicted feelings for Ole — Tor is led into unexpected emotional territory by a ferry encounter with handsome older psychologist Bjorn (Lars Jacob Holm, superb). Something sparks between them, even though Bjorn admits to having no sexual urges; days later, they meet again at the hospital after Bjorn receives some bad news, and they begin to find alternative ways to help each other. Haugerud’s airily woven script isn’t shy about hanging on coincidence and contrivance, as its various narrative strands hover between perceptive human observation and playful hypothesis. These exchanges feel relatable even when they don’t feel entirely real.

It’s all gratifyingly grown-up, with a light touch and a mostly straight-faced, off-center sense of humor that doesn’t undermine the gravity of the subject matter. A subplot involving increasingly neurotic plans by municipal worker Heidi — hilariously played by Engebrightsen as an outright pill in hippyish disguise — for a sex-positive celebration of the city subtly pokes fun at the occasional hypocrisies of effortfully progressive social politics, without getting reactionary about it. The soft, summery pastels of Cecilie Semec’s cinematography and the loose, flutey jazz stylings of Peder Kjellsby’s score are in tune with the film’s mellow puckishness; Hovig and Jacobsen’s wry, watchful lead performances likewise never push too hard.

“Love’s” commentary on modern relations may be more complex and chewy than just “live and let live,” but the film’s calm embrace of whatever works for the individual is refreshingly humane, rhetorically exciting and more than a little hot: We see how Marianne can benefit from diving into the no-strings unknown, just Tor and Bjorn mutually benefit from a committed but unlabelled sort of companionship. It’s a cool corrective to the days when “it’s complicated” was the go-to description for any relationship outside the conventions of heteronormative coupledom. This breezy, sexy, thoughtful film shows that straying from the rom-com ideal can be easier than it sounds, and a bit of fun too.

Reviewed at Soho Screening Rooms, London, Aug. 23, 2024. In Venice Film Festival — Competition. Running time: 119 MIN. (Original title: "Kjærlighet")

Production: (Norway) A Motlys production in co-production with Oslo Filmfond. (World sales: M-Appeal, Berlin.) Producers: Yngve Sæther, Hege Hauff Hvattum.
Crew: Director, screenplay: Dag Johan Haugerud. Camera: Cecilie Semec. Editor: Jens Christian Fodstad. Music: Peder Kjellsby.
With: Andrea Bræin Hovig, Tayo Cittadella Jacobsen, Marte Engebrigtsen, Lars Jacob Holm, Thomas Gullestad, Marian Saastad Ottesen, Morten Svartveit. (Norwegian dialogue)

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COMMENTS

From Travolta with CGI movie review (2010)
Roger Ebert criticizes the use of CGI and editing in modern action movies, such as "From Paris With Love", starring John Travolta. He compares the film with classic action sequences and praises a Korean thriller, "The Chaser".
From Paris With Love
John Travolta stars as a trigger-happy CIA agent who teams up with a young ambassador's aid in France. The movie has mixed reviews from critics and audiences, and is rated R for violence and language.
From Paris with Love (2010)
A young CIA agent teams up with a veteran spy to stop a terrorist plot in Paris. IMDb provides cast and crew information, user and critic reviews, trivia, goofs, quotes, soundtracks and more for this 2010 movie.
Movie Review
Jonathan Rhys Meyers (right) plays his diplomat partner. Rico Torres. From Paris With Love. Director: Pierre Morel. Genre: Action. Running Time: 92 minutes. Rated R for strong bloody violence ...
From Paris with Love
A CIA agent (John Travolta) trains a young operative (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) in Paris and gets involved in a terrorist plot. Critics and users give mixed reviews to this action thriller directed by Pierre Morel.
From Paris with Love (film)
John Travolta stars as a CIA agent who teams up with a diplomat in Paris to stop a terrorist plot involving a Pakistani group. The film, directed by Pierre Morel and co-written by Luc Besson, was released in 2010 and received mixed reviews.
From Paris With Love
Full Review | Original Score: 78/100 | Jun 16, 2010. Aaron Hillis GreenCine. Morel's underrated eye and knack for making kinetic movement rhythmic and easy to follow elevates Besson's run-of-the ...
From Paris with Love Review
3 out of 5 Stars, 6/10 Score. The only way the film could work is with the whack performance that John Travolta turns in as Charlie Wax, super-spy and crazy-man extraordinaire. After years of ...
From Paris With Love
Rated R, 95 minutes. John Travolta lets entertainingly loose as a bald-headed, goateed, gonzo CIA agent with a short fuse in Pierre Morel's "From Paris With Love," an otherwise unsightly heap of ...
From Paris With Love
Movie Review. If super-secret spy agencies took out want ads, their copy would probably emphasize a few critical elements of the job: the qualifications, the likelihood of travel, the 401(k) plan. ... From Paris With Love is not so much a movie as it is an M-rated video game, ...
Review: From Paris with Love
After District B13, what with its thrillingly abstract sense of movement, manipulation of action tropes, and socio-cultural fixations, it was tempting to announce Pierre Morel as the true heir to Luc Besson B-movie kingdom.Then came the shaky Taken, a rote revenge narrative that was unquestionably emboldened by Morel's conflation of the psychic and the physical as a man struggled with his ...
From Paris With Love: movie review
John Travolta stars in 'From Paris With Love,' a comedy-thriller-action movie that falls short on all three counts.
From Paris with Love Movie Review
Our review: Parents say (7 ): Kids say (2 ): This movie's over-the-top and muddled, and discerning audiences aren't likely to feel the love. Director Pierre Morel clearly attended the school of buddy-cop action films: FROM PARIS WITH LOVE has nearly all the ingredients of an edge-of-your-seat thriller: carefully choreographed sequences, a ...
From Paris With Love Review
15. Original Title: From Paris With Love. Don't let the title mislead you. This is not a romantic comedy in which the Eiffel Tower figures picturesquely. No, the title pays homage to James Bond ...
From Paris With Love review
Wax is meant to be some sort of ADHD force of nature. A man who lives to bag a bad guy then chomp down on a Big Mac (sorry, Royale with cheese), a real patriot. But, and this is From Paris With ...
From Paris with Love Review
In the vein of classic buddy-cop action films from the '80s like "Lethal Weapon," or "Red Heat," "From Paris With Love" delivers a fun, escapist action movie that mixes elements of the spy genre ...
From Paris with Love Review
From Paris with Love. 2.0. From Paris With Love is a 2010 action film starring John Travolta and Jonathan Rhys Meyers. The pair play Charlie Wax and James Reese, a US Ambassador employee and an American spy who work together to prevent a terrorist attack in Paris. The film was directed by Pierre Morel and written by Adi Hasak and Luc Besson.
Americans Spark the Gunfire in the City of Light
From Paris With Love. Directed by Pierre Morel. Action, Crime, Thriller. R. 1h 32m. By Stephen Holden. Feb. 4, 2010. A conservative estimate of the escalating body count in Pierre Morel's ...
From Paris with Love
February 04, 2010 A movie review by James Berardinelli. ... Such is the case with From Paris with Love, a production that views exposition as a necessary evil and dispenses it as quickly as possible so it can get back to shooting people and blowing things up. The movie is intellectually flat but viscerally involving and keeps the pace at such a ...
From Paris with Love (2010)
R 1 hr 32 min Feb 5th, 2010 Thriller, Action, Crime. James Reese has a good job as an ambassador's aid in France, but his real passion is a side gig—working in a minor role in the CIA. He would ...
From Paris with Love
From Paris with Love is the kind of movie the advertisements call "an adrenaline-packed thrill ride." But then you watch the movie and realize that it recalls most action movies since the Schwarzenegger and Stallone days—the plot is thin, the volume is loud, and the body count is high.
Movie Review: From Paris With Love (2010)
While the title of From Paris with Love may imply that it's a romantic comedy featuring the Eiffel Tower, the title is in fact a James Bond homage, and the production is a hardcore, no-holds-barred action flick which arrives courtesy of Luc Besson's production factory. For those unaware, Besson is the French filmmaker who produces American action films with far more verve than American ...
Movie Review: From Paris With Love
Somewhere in From Paris with Love, hidden beneath the mediocre action sequences, the meaningless plot and the eerily-familiar "unhinged" performance from John Travolta, lies a really neat idea for an action movie, in which a "realistic" secret agent, whose job consists mostly of planting bugs and maintaining his cover as a personal ...
'We Live in Time' Review: Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield Make a
Almut and Tobias, the two people at the center of the new romance "We Live in Time," are in many ways the perfect movie couple. They meet cute when she hits him with her car when he's coming ...
'Hard Truths' Review: You'll Love a Bitter Marianne Jean-Baptiste
The revered English director builds a prickly portrait around his 'Secrets & Lies' star, giving Jean-Baptiste the role of her career, if not an especially compelling story to inhabit. "Hard ...
'Bonjour Tristesse' Review: Starring Chloë Sevigny and Claes Bang
Cecile's mother died years before and she and Raymond are especially close, although not suspiciously so. Chew-Bose makes a smart choice by starting the movie with Cecile and her new love, a ...
'We Live in Time' Review: John Crowley's Out-of-Order Love Story
'We Live in Time' Review: You Can't Scramble a Love Story Without Breaking a Few Eggs Reviewed at Toronto Film Festival (Special Presentations), Sept. 6, 2024. Also in San Sebastian Film ...
'Love' Review: A Thoughtful Probe Into Unconventional Relationships
'Love' Review: Thoughtful, Grownup Norwegian Romantic Drama Accounts for Different Emotional Needs Reviewed at Soho Screening Rooms, London, Aug. 23, 2024. In Venice Film Festival — Competition.

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