John Travolta, doing that bald-headed crazy guy overacting thing he's so well versed at, plays Charlie Wax. Charlie is one of those movie cliche government badasses. The ones with no real leash to speak of, kept off the books by beaurocrats so that he can operate freely. I never could buy Travolta in this type of role. Anytime he needs to be portrayed as a little kooky, he shaves his head and grows a ridiculous furry goatee. He looks like a q-tip that's been dropped on a barbershop floor.
Wax has been dropped into Paris on a vague, horribly defined mission. It's either drugs or terrorism. Whoever wrote this thing seems unsure which direction to take it. Wax is teamed up with James Reese(Jonathan Rhys-Meyers), a low level assistant working at the American Embassy. He wants desperately to be a part of The Club, which I guess is a cool way of saying he gets to shoot people for the FBI. In order to do so, he needs to play chauffeur as Wax does his thing. Reese has a sexy girlfriend who worries about him. Think she likes this new dangerous mission? Of course not. If I knew what the mission was, I probably wouldn't have liked it myself.
Since this is a purely cookie cutter action film, little actually takes place other than Wax shooting a roomful of poorly identified stereotypes. Mostly Asians. The action sequences are bland and uninspired, but what's worse is that they are virtually impossible to track. Every quick cut shows another bad guy blown backwards full of holes, or crumpling to the ground in a heap. I think that's Travolta there shooting them, but since the camera is so impossibly shaky it's hard to tell. I expected a more guided, steady hand from director Pierre Morel, who brought us the intense action thriller, Taken
, just last year. Even before that, Morel directed the best action film in years in District B13
. Does the weight of expectation cause one to lose the balance in his camera hand? Or was he riding an electric bull during shooting? I've stated that I can't buy into Travolta when he's playing this type of character. It's essentially the same one he played in last year's The Taking of Pelham 123
. Travolta's played plenty of bad guys and tough guys, but he's best when he accentuates his coolness and charm along with it. These generic brutes don't suit him at all. Jonathan Rhys-Meyers is another story. The guy has a likable face and some genuine charisma, most notably on his Showtime series, The Tudors. Here he gives a performance that's best described as uninspired. Not that he really has anything to work with. Nobody does. The script is lazy. The story so badly laid out that I think they jettisoned it completely about halfway through(you'll know the scene where it happens) and decided to take a different path to nowhere. I'm not going to blame Luc Besson for this. Maybe that's me being biased towards one of my favorite writers/directors ever. The guy made The Professonal
and La Femme Nikita for pete's sake. From Paris with Love is going for a Kiss Kiss Bang Bang 
vibe, a riff that relies on pinpoint comedic timing and chemistry between the two leads. None of which are evident here.
