LITE 96

Now, I didn't hate From Paris With Love but I found it so silly and so excessive I thought I was watching a slapstick comedy.
It is slapstick and it is funny but the body count is so huge that it can hardly be called a laugh riot. It's not fair that directors should ask us to laugh at someone literally mowing down people just because they are the film's villains. In this case, as in Taken, they're all of ethnic origin.
At first Travolta lays waste what must be the entire Asian contingent living in Paris. Then he aims his guns at Middle Eastern and East Indian baddies. Hey when you're Charlie Wax, America's most lethal weapon against espionage and terrorism, you don't spare anyone regardless of race, religion, creed or sex.
Charlie is a one-man army but on this assignment, his bosses decide he needs someone to mellow him just a little. That's James Reese (Jonathan Rhys Meyers), a pencil pusher in Her Majesty's Secret Service who wants desperately to be Agent 007.
Hey wait a minute.  Rhys Meyers was actually considered as the new James Bond. That's probably just another in-joke in a movie bursting with jokes and jokey humor.
Charlie and James are the odd couple. Charlie is a walking time bomb. James is Mr. Cool.
From Paris With Love allows Travolta to throw caution and subtlety to the wind, something he seems to be enjoying these days. He's crude, rude and brutal and, for most of the action, he actually seems to be in great shape but then he has the help of CGI to be certain.
As a viewer, in order to enjoy From Paris With Love, you have to throw logic to the wind because little in this movie makes much sense. It's fast, furious and frenetic. And, at just 90 minutes, it's a blast of pure kinetic energy. A lot of misguided energy but I promise you won't fall asleep.
I also promise you'll lose count of just how many people die before Charlie and James save the world from evil.