John Travolta is a ton of fun in this latest concoction from the Luc Besson action factory, swearing, strutting and shooting his way through the City of Lights with such obvious relish that you wish he hadn’t expended such energy in what amounts to an assembly line of a movie.
It actually centers on an aide (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) to the U.S. Ambassador in France who moonlights as a low-level CIA operative but wants to be a real agent and so gets teamed with the unorthodox Travolta to thwart a terrorist plot involving cocaine, prostitutes and suicide bombers. None of which he can tell his beautiful French girlfriend (Kasia Smutniak) about.
As a colorful good guy, Travolta is the life of the party, boasting a bald head and a goatee and brimming with Grease-like gusto as he casually insults a French customs officer, sings a little ditty about his gun, refers to Meyers as “Hoss” and coolly takes out a restaurant full of drug-running Asian thugs. He’s got cockiness and confidence to spare.
The rest of the film is competently made, I suppose, with ample gunfire and explosions and an exciting freeway chase where Travolta hangs outside a car window with a rocket launcher that he ultimately employs to spectacular effect. It even tries for some depth in having Meyers learn the hard way what it takes to be a full-fledged agent.
What’s lacking is style, of which director Pierre Morel (Taken) has none. No interesting angles. No snappy editing. Just by-the-numbers filmmaking. I mean, the guy somehow fails to make a shootout in a room full of mannequins anything but suspenseful. It doesn’t help that Travolta really has no equal here, as Meyers (The Tudors) does a decent acting job but utterly lacks charisma.
And yet Morel is still a better director of action than, say, Rob Cohen, and the script (co-written by Besson) gives Travolta lots of funny dialogue and includes a nice nod to the star’s part in Pulp Fiction. It also makes a droll little jab at Americans, as Myers’ boss at one point remarks, “God I love the French.” So do I, especially when one of them gives Travolta the chance to have fun again. – [DVD]
Action/Crime/Thriller
Rated R
DVD Release Date: 6/8/10
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