From Paris With Love
Let’s make no bones about it. From Paris With Love is an obvious, albeit entertaining beast. If you subscribe to Shotgun Quarterly or some other firearm periodical, you will be particularly satisfied by Luc Besson’s latest effort here. There are guns, lots and lots of them in fact. Be in no doubt whatsoever that what this film undoubtedly lacks in plot devices and subtle nuances, it makes up for in spades with men being rough, tough and full of more testosterone than a naturally angry and aggressive orang-utan on a red bull bender that’s not had sex for a year and has just been told his sister has been gang-raped by a group of his worst enemies. Okay, I’m exaggerating but you get the general idea. All of this dick-waving is all well and good, but it immediately ostracises most of the possible movie-going audience. This isn’t your usual date movie, for example, unless your date has bigger biceps than you do and goes by the name of Dave. Additionally, if you have a penchant for Merchant Ivory, then this probably isn’t going to push all of your buttons. Or indeed any of them, come to that. Last year I raved about Luc Besson’s ‘Taken’ and while I still stand by my review of Liam Neeson et al, the two films are pretty similar on the surface. It’s only when you get into them that you notice the stark, glaring differences.
On the acting front, there isn’t really much to say. This is not a film reliant upon that kind of talent. Suffice to say that hard man Charlie Wax and confused James Reece (Rhys Meyers) do as much justice as their rather limited characters demand of them. The script wasn’t written by Shakespeare, so you can reasonably expect the acting to be up to much the same quality as most of Besson’s previous work. Perfunctory, direct and as I say, sporadically littered with some dry wit which could easily have been plagiarised from a dozen other formulaic buddy movies.
Altogether then, this is really one for the boys with its big bangs, bigger guns and unfeasible car chases. The plot won’t test even the most knuckle-dragging primate, which I guess is just the way Besson intended. Lest we forget, he is very good at this most of the time. So personally, I’m prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt and say while the film is lacking in most things that constitute brilliant cinema, I’m sure Besson knows that much already.
There is none of the righteous, revenge driven hatred and bile involved in tracking down a lost daughter here. Taken was punctuated with sadistic acts of pain and suffering, but in the end it was no more than a story about one man’s love for his daughter. From Paris With Love does not have the same heartstrings to pull on, and goes for ‘national security’ instead, with is nowhere near as satisfying for the viewer unless you are one of the subscribers to those magazines I mentioned earlier. There is a target demographic here that would at first seem to be similar to Taken, but the content delivered is very different. If this was funnier, it could easily be classed as a more hardcore Lethal Weapon. A buddy cop movie, with one partner a head-spinning, gun-toting lunatic and one more sedate partner that really goes along for the ride, not sure if he is ever really going to like it.
That isn’t to say that the film doesn’t have its comedic moments. Some of Charlie Wax’s (Travolta) lines are at least smirk-worthy and are delivered with suitable timing. Let’s not forget that Travolta is an old hand at comedy, if not always very good at it, so we shouldn’t really be surprised. It’s just a shame there isn’t more of it here to break up the car chases and the ever present gunfights.
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