From Paris With Love

I wonder why studios would release a movie much later in India than they did world over. Especially with an all out action flick like From Paris with Love. A movie which has all the ingredients to go down really well with an audience that holds action flicks in really high esteem. FPWL released in the International market in February this year. And we had to wait till the weekend before Diwali to watch it. By now most of the target audience would have already downloaded it. Which would explain why the theatres running not so full. I think there were all of 10 people when I caught up with the afternoon show today. Sad – but true.


James Reece (pronounced Reese – Jonathan Rhys Meyers) is the highly ambitious Personal Assistant of the US Ambassador in Paris. Super efficient and is held in extremely high regard by the Ambassador. More to do with his chess playing skills I would assume. Not that it takes anything away from his capabilities to execute his basic responsibilities. He also keeps doing odd jobs for the Secret Service but is never given a piece of the real action. His repeated attempts to get a field job have not yielded any results yet. He is in a relationship with the gorgeous Caroline (Kasia Smutniak) who is a designer by profession. She is very much in love with Reece and would like to get married to him. And coz Reece is making no effort to take that little step forward, she proposes. Reece is floored and obviously accepts.

But as luck would have it, our couple’s sweet moment together is short lived. But for the right reason. Reece finally gets his opportunity to get onto a field assignment and is assigned to a partner Charlie Wax (John Travolta) a secret agent par excellence as they would say in France who has just landed into Paris and is stuck with customs over some cans of energy drink which could have been picked up in any department store in Paris. However, our hero is called in to bail him out – which he does very effectively.

Now Wax is not your average ordinary every day secret agent and he goes about his tasks – shall we say – a bit adventurously. Reece is blissfully unaware of it but starts getting extremely uncomfortable when the first stop that they take is at a Chinese Restaurant for a cocaine bust. Now why would a secret agent of Wax’s stature be interested in a few kilos of cocaine? Reece tries his best to get some information out of Wax but only manages to get some crap about how the minister for defence’s niece overdosed on coke and a few important guys were pissed about the entire episode.

What follows is an absolutely fabulous series of chases and non stop action led by one of the most versatile actors of our time – John Travolta. I mean the guy is almost pushing 60 and is much larger than his SNL days but man does he have screen presence. He carries on with the same charisma that he show in Taking of Pelham 123 – only this time in a positive role. He completely overshadows Rhys Meyers who in all fairness does a fairly decent job in executing his role as the rookie secret agent. No one else worth mentioning in the entire movie. Director Pierre Morrel though continues with his love for Paris. His previous directorial attempt was Taken starring Liam Neeson again based out of Paris and was a wonderful flick. With FPWL he achieves a similar result. Not the same one unfortunately. FPWL still stands out thanks to, as previously mentioned, superb action sequences. I give this a 6.5 on 10. Watch it even if you are not an action freak. Travolta rules yet again!!!!