“From Paris with Love” wants to be a slick, funny, brutal action movie about a mismatched CIA team hunting terrorists in Paris. It gets the first two wrong and the third right. The result is a film that feels like a parody of itself, one that knows it should be tense and exciting but can’t shake the feeling that it’s playing dress-up.
Pierre Morel directs from a script co-written by Luc Besson, and the film stars John Travolta as Charlie Wax and Jonathan Rhys Meyers as James Reece. It runs 92 minutes and plays like a compact, fast-moving disaster. The tagline promises “Two agents. One city. No mercy.” What it delivers is a movie that doesn’t quite know what kind of story it wants to be.
Trailer, via GlobalTrailers.
James Reece and Charlie Wax
James Reece starts the film as a perfect employee. He’s the personal aide to the U.S. ambassador in France, efficient, affable, and completely bored. His real passion is his secret life as a CIA operative with an Official Cover, but he’s stuck in a desk job. When his boss assigns him to deliver a top-secret chip to the ambassador’s office, he jumps at the chance to get out of the building.
The chip turns out to be in his jacket pocket, and he hides it as his girlfriend knocks on the door. That’s the setup. It’s a small, clever touch, and it establishes Reece as a man who knows how to improvise under pressure. But the film doesn’t build on that. Instead, it pairs him with Charlie Wax, a field agent who is everything Reece isn’t.
Charlie Wax is a loose cannon. He’s trigger-happy, rude, and completely unfiltered. Travolta plays him as a man who has spent too long in the field and has lost any sense of normalcy. When he’s detained by French Customs because he refused to surrender cans of his favorite energy drink, he abuses the officials until Reece uses his diplomatic authority to let his luggage through. It’s a moment that should establish the stakes. Instead, it just makes Wax look like a jerk.
Once in the car, Wax apologizes for his behavior and reveals that the cans actually held pieces of his personal sidearm. That’s the reveal. It’s meant to humanize him. It doesn’t work. The apology is rushed, and the reveal feels like a punchline that never lands. The film moves on before it lets the audience process what just happened.
The Triad Drug Ring and the Terrorists
Wax explains that he has been sent to Paris to investigate a Triad drug ring. That investigation leads him to raid a Triad-run restaurant and a warehouse. In those raids, he reveals that his true objective is to trace money back to a group of Pakistani terrorists. The trail leads to a rundown apartment where most of the terrorists are killed in an armed confrontation.
It’s a simple chain of events, and it should work. The problem is that the film doesn’t spend enough time on the Triad operation to make it feel like a proper investigation. It’s more like a checklist of things Wax needs to do before he can move on to the real threat. The Triad connection exists only to give Wax a reason to be in Paris. It’s a placeholder, not a story.
The terrorists themselves are a threat. They’re hiding explosives beneath their burkas, and they’ve pinned photographs of Reece to a wall. That’s the kind of detail that should be unsettling. Instead, it reads as a joke. The film treats the terrorists as obstacles rather than people, and that distance undermines the tension. When the final confrontation arrives, it feels less like a fight and more like a cleanup.
The Comedy Problem
The film is trying to be funny. That’s the big problem. Travolta and Meyers are both capable actors, and they clearly want to play this as a comedy. But the jokes don’t land. They’re delivered with the wrong timing, and they undercut the action sequences that follow. A film this short shouldn’t have room for comedy. It should be focused on the chase, the shootouts, and the tension.
The film’s best moments come when it stops trying to be funny and just lets the violence happen. The shootout in the warehouse is a pulse-raising sequence, and it’s the best minute of the film. The editing is quick, the gunfire is loud, and the camera doesn’t linger on the blood. It’s over in a minute, and it’s the best minute of the film.
But the comedy keeps creeping back in. Wax’s abuse of French Customs is supposed to be funny. It isn’t. The scene drags, and it takes time away from the actual investigation. The film is chasing two genres at once, and neither one gets the attention it deserves.
The Technical Execution
The film is competently made. The action sequences are well-choreographed, and the stunts are executed with skill. But the direction is flat. Morel doesn’t bring anything new to the table. He’s working within a familiar template, and he doesn’t add anything to it. The film looks professional, but it doesn’t look alive.
The cinematography is serviceable. The locations in Paris are used effectively, and the contrast between the embassy and the rundown apartment is sharp. But the lighting is often too bright, and the color grading is inconsistent. It’s a film that could have looked better with a little more care.
The sound design is functional. The gunshots are loud, the explosions are big, and the music swells at the right moments. It’s all competent, but it’s not memorable. The film doesn’t do anything to make the sound stand out. It just follows the standard formula for an action thriller.
The Supporting Cast
The supporting cast is mostly wasted. Kasia Smutniak plays Caroline, and she’s given almost nothing to do. Richard Durden plays Ambassador Bennington, and his role is reduced to a few lines of exposition. Bing Yin plays M. Wong, and he’s barely in the film. Amber Rose Revah plays Nichole, and her scenes are cut short. Éric Godon plays the Foreign Minister, and he’s a talking head.
The film is a showcase for Travolta and Meyers, and it doesn’t give anyone else a chance to shine. That’s a shame, because some of these actors could have brought more depth to their roles. The film’s refusal to develop its supporting characters is a missed opportunity.
The Final Confrontation
The film builds to a showdown in the embassy. The terrorists have infiltrated the building, and Reece and Wax are the only ones who can stop them. It’s a classic setup, and the film executes it with a minimum of fuss. The shootouts are quick, the dialogue is minimal, and the tension is maintained.
But the resolution is weak. The film doesn’t give Reece a moment to reflect on what he’s become. He’s just a pawn in Wax’s game, and the film doesn’t let him escape that role. The final scene is a callback to the earlier chip scene, and it’s a reminder that the film never really knew what it wanted to be.
The Verdict
“From Paris with Love” is a mess. It’s a film that tries to be a spy thriller, a buddy comedy, and an action spectacle all at once. It fails at all three. The comedy doesn’t land, the drama is thin, and the action is competent but forgettable.
The film’s strengths are its technical execution and its commitment to its own absurdity. It knows it’s silly, and it embraces that silliness. But that embrace is a weakness. A film that knows it’s silly should lean into that silliness. This one just gets in its own way.
The film is also a product of its era. It was released in 2010, and it reflects the post-9/11 paranoia that defined American cinema at the time. The terrorists are a threat, and they’re treated as a threat. The film doesn’t question the war on terror. It just participates in it.
That’s a problem. A film that doesn’t question its assumptions is a film that hasn’t done its homework. The film is content to be a genre exercise, and that contentment is its downfall.
The Numbers
- Runtime: 92 minutes
- Genres: Action, Crime, Thriller
- Director: Pierre Morel
- Writer: Adi Hasak, Luc Besson
The film is available to stream and rent on various platforms. It’s a minor entry in the action-thriller canon, and it’s worth seeing for the occasional burst of energy. But it’s not worth remembering.
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