From Paris With Love Review

If a title like From Paris With Love sounds as if it may be more than a familiar knockoff of say, the James Bond Russian turf classic, you're probably not far from the truth. The usual homicidal espionage extinction outing but lacking the bold wit, icy elegance and, shall we say, relative subtlety that has characterized Bond escapades, From Paris With Love is less From Russia With Love than a cynically fashioned version of Pulp Fiction's comical cruelty…read more [News Blaze] Luc Besson is a movie-making maniac, an action auteur whose signature is all over the films he produces and writes, though the ones he directs haven't measured up since The Professional, which is now 16 years ago. Part Peckinpah, part Hong Kong, the movies Besson creates – including Pierre Morel's From Paris With Love, which he produced and wrote the story for (and, also this week, District 13: Ultimatum) — are kinetic juggernauts, as carefully plotted with action beats as any of Jerry Bruckheimer's or Joel Silver's films, but with more wit and adrenaline. There's no pretense or wasted motion in Besson's films, and that includes little time spent trying to force sense into the script…read more [The Huffington Post] Jonathan Rhys Meyers as James Reece / Richard Stevens in From Paris With Love John Travolta lets entertainingly loose as a bald-headed, goateed, gonzo CIA agent with a short fuse in Pierre Morel's “From Paris With Love,” an otherwise unsightly heap of nonsense that keeps tripping over its own swagger. It certainly won't be taken for “Taken,” the hit Morel guilty pleasure released a year ago in North America during Super Bowl weekend that effectively reset Liam Neeson in the image of a take-no-prisoners action movie hero…read more [THR] Morel will inevitably be compared to John Woo, whom he trounces. He has fewer mannerisms (no damn doves) and a keener eye; his fastest, most kinetic shots flow together like frames in a flipbook. When he interrupts that flow for a snatch of slow motion, you see the lyricism of a warrior at full extension or the floppy-limbed contortions of a body flung to its doom. The beefy Travolta isn't the first actor to spring to mind in connection with lightning reflexes, but he's souped up and limber, elated by his own Zen prowess, and the choreography is so expert that I never detected the stuntmen substitutions…read more [NYMag] Jonathan Rhys Meyers as James Reece / Richard Stevens and John Travolta as Charlie Wax in From Paris With Love If Dune fans felt a knot developing in their stomachs when Taken director Pierre Morel was announced as the new shepherd of the big-screen remake of the sci-fi classic, then Morel's newest film, From Paris With Love, is bound to drive a few of those same fans to the brink of full-fledged nausea. For if it's a thinking-man's Dune that they want, From Paris is about as far from such an approach as possible — it's fast, funny, and pretty dumb…read more [IGN]   John Travolta shaved his head, dyed his goatee and gave himself and his stunt double a helluva workout in From Paris With Love, a gonzo spy shoot-em-up from the folks who gave us Taken. But even though the action is every bit as explosive and the jokey tone is an amusing departure from Taken's serious man “with very particular skills,” Paris is basically a bloody buddy picture that tries too hard…read more [Orlando Sentinel] Jonathan Rhys Meyers as James Reece / Richard Stevens in From Paris With Love I hasten to say this is not criticism of John Travolta. He succeeds in this movie by essentially acting in a movie of his own. The fight construction is the same with most modern action movies. In past decades, studios went so far as to run fencing classes for swordfights. Stars like Buster Keaton, Douglas Fairbanks Sr. and Errol Flynn did their own stunts and made sure you could see them doing them. Most of the stunts in classic kung-fu movies, starring such stars as Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan, really happen. Sure, they used camera angles, trampolines and wires, but you try it and see how easy it is…read more [Roger Ebert] John Travolta as Charlie Wax in From Paris With Love Most filmgoers probably remember the famous dance scene in Pulp Fiction, when John Travolta, once the arbiter of cool, added to the repertoire of moves that made him a star in Saturday Night Fever nearly two decades earlier. But people tend to forget that Uma Thurman's index fingers had it right in that movie: Travolta really was a square, a little dim and consumed by panic—about Ving Rhames, about “the Bonnie situation,” about giving Thurman “the shot.” From Paris With Love, the latest (along with this week's District B13 sequel) from Luc Besson's prolific Eurotrash action factory, features a callback to Pulp Fiction, but a much different Travolta, vastly more confident and aggressive in his hammy bad-assery. He's about as cool as his suburban biker character in Wild Hogs…read more [A.V.Club] From Paris With Love Trailer (HD Quality) [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1sLG0owba0E[/youtube]