Super Bowl Sunday. The biggest TV night of the year.Untold millions gathered around their massive flatscreen HDTVs, shoving fatty foods down their throats, watching a bunch of guys wearing tight pants slamming into each other, fighting over an oblong ball.
Oh yeah, and a bunch of really expensive, lame commercials.
So what was I doing on this monumental evening, you didn't ask?
Why, I was watching that guy from "The Tudors" get outacted by a cocaine-filled vase in "Taken" director Pierre Morel's latest film, "From Paris With Love".
See, I'm not a sports guy.
So... this movie. Spoiler Time, I guess.
Jonathan Rhys Myers plays James Reece, personal assistant to the U.S. Ambassador in Paris. He has a French seamstress live-in girlfriend named Caroline. She cannibalized the bedroom curtains to make her latest dress. She's so cute! He lives in a small apartment with a bunch of books, and he has a shitty excuse for a moustache.
Seriously, this guy is playing Henry VIII in "The Tudors", and he can't grow a fucking beard. Every portrait of Henry VIII you have ever seen portrays the decadent cocksucker sporting a massive, manly beard.
And crippling obesity. In some portraits, you can see a positively Jabba-esque hunger in his beady eyes.
But this douchebag can't even sport convincing 5 o'clock shadow. His pathetic peach fuzz makes Leonardo DiCaprio's occassional big-screen facial hair look like the beard of the mighty Billy Gibbons. It's a fucking disgrace.
You'd think the director, or the cinematographer, or the make-up artist, or fucking somebody would sit this bastard down and tell him to give up on the facial follicles. It's a wasteland. Especially once John Travolta pops up, but I'm not there, yet.
So this Henry VIII can't grow a beard to save his festering leg, and he has crazy eyes. Crazy, bugging-out-of-his-fucking-head eyes. It's obscene.
I've seen this guy attempt the odd tender moment in cinema. It doesn't matter how convincing he sounds, you won't believe a word he says.
You could be in a terrible automobile accident, and lose consciousness. Here comes Johnny Rhys Myers On The Spot, the right man in the right place at the right time, dashing toward the burning wreck to pull your bleeding ass out of the fire. You slowly rouse from your micro-coma, hearing this soothing Irish accent, telling you everything is going to be all right.
Then you open your eyes. Give yourself a moment for your blurred vision to readjust, wincing from the painful gash in your head. You look up, and the face comes into focus. You think to yourself:
"Oh my God, look at his eyes!"
"Did this guy rape me?"
"Is he going to rape me?"
"Holy shit, I'm bleeding. I think this psycho beat me up and raped me!"
(Screaming incoherently)
It doesn't matter that this guy just saved your life. You just suffered a terrible trauma. You're hurt. You're confused. And in this state, you naturally assume the Irish dude standing over you with the "I am going to rape you" eyes has or intends to rape you sometime in the near future.
It's only natural.
Holy shit, that was a weird digression. My apologies. Moving on...
So Rape Eyes is working for the U.S. Ambassador in Paris. But apparently, he's also got a side gig with the CIA.
Nothing too flashy. He gets called out to switch out the license plates for a group of field operatives in a parking garage. Later, he is tasked with planting a bug in some diplomat's office.
He first tries to clandestinely affix the bug to the underside of the diplomat's desk with chewing gum. He fails at this. So he turns to plan B: Staple the fucking bug to the desk. He staples a sensitive piece of surveillance equipment to the bottom of a desk.
And despite my reservations with this questionable tactic, it seems to work. He's commended for a job well done by some mysterious voice on his cell phone two minutes later. So... Bravo?
The CIA Sidekick spends the first twenty minutes of the movie alternating between his monkey work for his superiors and making goo-goo eyes at his delightful French girlfriend. They share some wonderfully romantic moments together, as I begin to wonder if I accidentally walked into a screening of "Dear John".
Then our boy gets the call he's been waiting for. A field operative on a special mission needs Reece to drive his ass around Paris while he does whatever the fuck he's supposed to be doing. If he does his job well, he can say goodbye to shitty gruntwork for more qualified people, and hello to the dangerous and sexy life of a gun-toting, license to kill-carrying field agent.
So Reece heads to the airport to fetch his new partner, who is being held by customs officers because they won't let him bring his energy drinks into the country.
This is how we are introduced to Charlie Wax, the bald-headed, earring-sporting, foul-mouthed loose cannon CIA agent played by a very bearded John Travolta.
Say what you will about the man's performance, but at least Travolta can grow a fucking beard. I wonder if Rhys Myers ever cried himself to sleep in his trailer after hours, overcome with beard envy. That thought makes me smile.
Anyway, Reece takes Wax to a Chinese restaurant, where the two have a pleasant conversation about the dubious cultural origins of Egg Foo Young.
Then Wax whips out a gun and kills everybody.
Then he shoots up the ceiling, and it starts raining cocaine.
Then Wax tells Reece to empty an ornate vase and fill it with the cocaine falling from the sky.
On the road, Wax tells Reece some bullshit story about how the Secretary of Defense's niece OD'd on cocaine sold by the same Chinese guys who were using the now-defunct Chinese restaurant as a front for their drug smuggling operations. Wax says he was sent to Paris to break up the drug ring as a favor for the Defense Secretary.
At least, I'm pretty sure that's what he said. To be honest, the film's plot didn't really grab me. I was barely paying attention to the boring exposition in this sequence. Which turned out to be no big deal, because the whole "Defense Secretary's niece OD'd on Chinese smack" story was a complete lie.
The real reason why Wax is in Paris is to thwart a terrorist plot to attack some big international summit. The terrorists were using the money from the drug operations to fund their imminent attack.
Why Charlie couldn't just tell the truth from the start, I have no idea. It's completely pointless.
So the Dynamic Duo, with their trusty sidekick Coke Vase, go about their business, running down leads and shooting a bunch of ethnic people. Reece literally drags this vase filled with cocaine around for half the movie. Kinda like Linus and his security blanket.
Wax and Reece both indulge in a little cocaine from their handy vase from time to time, which I'm sure is Standard Operating Procedure.
They get into a fight with some asian gang members. Well, Wax gets into a fight with some asian gang members. Reece just holds his vase and looks incredulous. Then they shoot it out with another group of asian gang members.
Then Wax fucks a prostitute. Then he shoots some more people.
Most of these action sequences are bleeding together in my mind. It's difficult to separate them.
I know Reece gets jumped by two dudes, and Wax just watches them beat the shit out of his partner for a while before he shoots them both.
There's a big sequence in an apartment building filled with armed terrorists. Wax shoots a bunch of people, then drops a bunch of C4 on a pair of stragglers running to their getaway car.
Reece is confronted by a particularly unhinged terrorist who shoves Reece's gun in his mouth and pulls the trigger, blowing his brains out the back of his skull and showering Captain Crazy Eyes with blood.
This is the moment when it gets real for Reece. He's in shock and covered in blood, in a daze. He catches a glimpse of himself in a mirror and frantically washes his face.
I know I was supposed to feel something for the guy, but his fucking eyes ruined it. While he was having his big acting moment, I was wondering how long his "turn your back on me and I will carve a hole into your back with a rusty knife and fuck it" eyes would haunt my dreams.
I'm getting sidetracked, again.
Oh Jesus, it doesn't really matter, anyway. Travolta shoots people. Rhys Myers carries his drug vase and stares. Lather, Rinse, Repeat.
It's nighttime, now. Wax sits on a bench and eats a Royale with Cheese. That's right, a "Pulp Fiction" joke. What the fuck for?
Reece gets a text from Amelie's ugly sister telling him to come home for dinner, and to invite his "new friend". So the Odd Couple leave their French McDonald's food to fester in a dumpster in favor of some home-cooked cuisine.
When they arrive at Reece's apartment, they are joined by Caroline's friend Nichole. Wax clumsily hits on Nichole before he blows her brains out at the dinner table.
He tells Reece that Caroline and her friend are working with the terrorists and that his apartment is choked with surveillance equipment. Caroline shoots Reece in the shoulder then jumps out the window. Wax pursues, but loses her.
The next day, Wax blows up the terrorist mastermind in his bomb-filled car with a bazooka before the bad guy plows into a U.S. delagate's limo. And Reece rushes to the summit to stop his sleeper agent girlfriend from blowing it the fuck up with her incredible suicide-bombing skills.
He tries to talk her out of it, telling her how much he loves her and crying and OH MY FUCKING GOD HE'S STARING RIGHT AT ME and she tries to blow herself up anyway, so he shoots her in the head.
Job well done, Wax and Reece play chess in front of a plane and dream of foiling future terrorist plots together in a string of sequels with names that write themselves. "From ___ With Love".
Blah blah blah, roll credits.
Despite everything I've said, I actually enjoyed it. It entertained me, which is more than I can say about my last movie-going experience.
Travolta seemed to be having a lot of fun with his role. He has some decent one-liners, and loves his guns. He's really the only reason to see the movie. Every moment he's off-screen, the film suffers.
Jonathan Rhys Myers can't really pull off a convincing American accent, and... those eyes...
Everyone else does an okay job, I guess. Nothing noteworthy.
I liked the gratuitous violence. I liked the fact the schmaltzy love story that I hated so much ended with the hero shooting his lady in the face before she could blow herself up. That was nice.
There aren't enough R-rated action movies out there, anymore. Perhaps that's why I am giving this one a pass. But at least it tried.
Now if you'll excuse me, I am off to scream myself to sleep.
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