Viewed – 05 March 2010 Cinema
French director / producer Luc Besson has made a bit of a career for himself in recent years since hanging up his directing cap, as a writer mostly responsible for a slew of credible thrillers like Taken, The Transporter and District 13. Yet such writing credits pale in comparison to his directorial work, and again this is another offering that doesn’t quite do the man justice.
Brit actor Jonathan Rhys Meyers plays a rookie government agent, thirsty for promotion who gets paired up with a reckless, gung-ho John Travolta (sporting a surprisingly cool looking bald head & goatee) and find his life turned upside down in the process. Set in Paris for no other reason than the fact it’s a cool setting, and 90% of the production team are French, we follow our odd-couple of government agents from gun battle to gun battle interspersed with some bonding. Story is so light as to be none existant and this seems mostly a vehicle for Travolta to show off his action credentials in some stylish, frantic gun battles as we watch him gun down stereotype drug dealers and terrorists and eventually reveal his plans to stop an assassination. Rhys Myers is likable if poorly developed, and not one character in this has any depth and a few throwaway lines to their past count for nothing. This is primarily a male testosterone fantasy of a movie with car chases and plenty of attitude. I at first found Travolta’s over-acting a bit forced and unbelievable, but after a while grew to like the guy, and paired with such a straight man, it made for a fun buddy movie – but sadly there is little else to recommend this over a wealth of better movies out there.
Verdict: 2 /5
Other movies, better than this that Luc Besson has wrote:
Craig's Movie Report 