From Paris with Love (2010)

From Paris with Love is the third movie director Pierre Morel makes and it's also the third based on Luc Besson's story work. I really enjoyed their last work Taken, but this one is more straight forward typical 90's action movie with heavy allusions to other familiar movies.

To begin with the easiest recognizable, the title reminds us of James Bond going to Russia with love back in the 60's. An early scene here reminds a lot of an early scene from the John Woo Hong Kong movie The Killers, which I recently reviewed. There's also the not so subtle homage to Quentin Tarantino as the John Travolta character again has a Royal with cheese thing going, much like in Pulp Fiction. I could go on, but you get the picture.

The acting isn't half bad. Travolta has a fun time with his killing machine special operations character 'Charlie Wax', and while I could imagine better he delivers enough to pull it off. Jonathan Rhys Meyers is the agent wannabee 'James Reece' doing low grade work in Paris, now paired up to help 'Wax' on his Paris mission. Rhys Meyers is highly believable in his role, but I'm still far from in love with the cast. He really doesn't give us a lot, and as such fails were other young actors have portrayed these kind of rookies before.

The story is the main reason From Paris with Love doesn't manage to elevate to the fun movie Morel and Besson intended. It's just a little to straight forward story-wise to make it when the acting ain't driving the characters better. Truth being told. If you're surprised by anything in this movie, you haven't seen many movies in this genre. It doesn't pull a rabbit out of the hat even once, and if you don't you really need some other excellent aspects in it to make it worth the runtime. There's about three minutes worth of gunfights really well done and about eight seconds of car driving the same. That's not enough, but it's better than a lot of other writers and directors ever manage to get into their b-action movies. At least that's something. I'm sure we'll see more to both Besson and Morel in the years to come, and hopefully they'll again elevate to the level they had in Taken.