Review Tuesday: 'From Paris with Love'

Today’s ‘Review Tuesday’. I’ve previously written that all films are one of two types: those you disappear into, and those you grow from [1]. As yesterday’s Farmdoc’s Blog post tells, last week I had a tough week. For DVD night last Saturday, I most definitely needed a film to disappear into. And the Bigpondmovies gods presciently obliged – by sending me the 2010 thriller From Paris With Love [2, 3]. It’s a buddy film [4] starring John Travolta (with shaven head and black goatee and moustache) and the Irish actor Jonathan Rhys Meyers (who, perhaps uncoincidentally, is a dead ringer for the young Johnny Depp). Travolta plays the uncouth hardened crimebuster Charlie Wax, and Meyers his young and naïve partner James Reece. Wax’s mission is to dismantle a terrorist cell. Reece tags along and does what Wax tells him to. The film’s entirely set in Paris, with the locations ranging from the Eiffel Tower café to seedy immigrant apartment blocks. I found it absorbing. It moves at a breathless pace, I like the emerging buddy relationship between Wax and Reece, and the action stunts are worth seeing. Apparently the 56-year-old Travolta did all Wax’s stunts himself. Really impressive. Despite all this, I can’t give From Paris with Love more than three stars out of five. But for me it was a perfect pick-me-up at the end of a difficult and distressing week.

P.S. Happy southern hemisphere spring equinox.