A personal aide to U.S. Ambassador in France, James Reece (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) has an enviable life in Paris and a beautiful French girlfriend, but his real passion is his side job as a low-level operative for the CIA. All James wants is to become a bona fide agent and see some real action. So when he's offered his first senior-level assignment, he can't believe his good luck until he meets his new partner, special agent Charlie Wax (John Travolta) - a trigger-happy, wisecracking, loose cannon who's been sent to Paris to stop a terrorist attack. Wax leads James on a white-knuckle shooting spree through the Parisian underworld that has James praying for his desk job. But when James discovers he's a target of the same crime ring they're trying to bust, he realizes there's no turning back...and that Wax himself might be his only hope for making it through the next forty-eight hours alive.Doesn't quite have the stones Taken does, but still kicks all kinds of ass. What you have here is essentially a buddy cop movie; Jonathan Rhys Meyers is the down-to-earth one, just trying to get by and do his job, while John Travolta is the over-the-top insane loose cannon. They team up to fight terrorism in Paris. This movie goes from slow to outrageous very quickly and at one very well defined point. When John Travolta enters the movie, he's just this completely deranged head-case, and so much so that he's just flat out entertaining to watch. Even though it's by the same director as Taken, it's a completely different type of action movie. Taken is a revenge-filled Punisher type of film, while this is more of a gunfights-to-rock music romp. If you like fun action movies, you'll probably like this just so long as you don't go into it looking for a story; Pierre Morel has never been a really good story teller (although to be fair, it's not a terribly good story to begin with), but what he really is is one extremely talented action director, and one that I am excited to see what he does next. It does contain everything that is spoofed in Hot Fuzz, but it is still a good, solid action movie.
***/*****
3/5 Stars... even though Travolta looks mighty weird with a bald head...
***/*****
3/5 Stars... even though Travolta looks mighty weird with a bald head...
I liked this one a lot also. Both leads were good at what they were there for but it was the direction and the stuntwork that was most impressive. This is the director I want to do any 'Escape From New York' remake.
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