MOVIE REVIEW - From Paris With Love

John Travolta is back on the big screen with the new action movie, From Paris With Love. Also starring Jonathan Rhys Meyers, and a bunch of action.

FPWL is the story of a young government intelligence agent James (Meyers) living in Paris with his beautiful French fiance'. James wants more from his career and wants to be more part of the "action." So as luck would have it, he gets teamed up with Charlie Wax (Travolta). Wax is the governments best counter-terrorism agent. Wax has a very unorthodox way of handling virtually every situation. He just kills everyone in his path. The two of them storm through Paris and basically killing everyone in their way. Well, at least Wax does.

This is the problem here. FPWL is about 90 minutes and after about 50 of those, someone behind the scenes said, "Hey maybe we should have a story here!" Good idea. Then a few twists take place that actually give FPWL a direction. For the first half of this movie, it's basically James watching Wax play superhero. Or even worse, it's more Meyers watching Travolta play "movie." Half of a movie of gratuitous killing with no story doesn't really work.

After a story starts to take shape FPWL, does get a whole lot better in a hurry. And to be honest if you're in the mood for mindless action, then this may be your movie. There is a certain sense too of this movie not taking itself too seriously, and that helps. Some funny lines, and an attempt at developing Wax as a real "character" sort of works, but the trouble here, all Wax really does is kill people. So the character definition comes up a bit short.

To be fair, this is not a washout. But in honesty, it's a movie that you've seen a thousand times before, just not with Travolta with a bald head. It's forgettable, and in the course of time, will just be a movie you confuse with other movies just like it. It's only 90 minutes so it doesn't wear out its welcome either.

From Paris With Love. Mindless action, generally leads to a mindless movie. Nothing new here.