From Paris with Love

As with Spaghetti Westerns and sit-coms, you know they've jumped the shark when the tone turns to self-mockery. So it is that in one fell swoop John Travolta and suicide bombers have bid audiences their valediction. With Luc Besson's name prominently displayed as its story source, "From Paris With Love" is a shameless shoot 'em up body-count movie with barely enough humor to distract from the pejoratively exploitative nature of its relentlessly bloody action. There is no character or story development here, only innumerable excuses for the seemingly endless homicides that they provide Travolta's impudent trigger-happy CIA hit man Charlie Wax. Waylaid at Charles de Gaulle airport upon his arrival in Paris, Charlie needs wannabe special ops agent Reese (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) to liberate him. "Wax," as his likes to be called, is in town to fulfill a vague mission busting up a Chinese cocaine ring and a Pakistani terrorist cell when he isn't munching on yet another "Royale with cheese"--yes, just like in "Pulp Fiction." Travolta himself is the only other thing this hot-mess-on-a-greased-platter has in common with that astronomically better film. Adi Hasak's screenplay sounds like it was written by a French junior high school kid who just discovered he can curse in English as much as he wants. Wax takes Reese under his itchy wing long enough to teach him the finer points of cold-blooded killing with a "look-no-hands" attitude that comes off as more of an insult than a joke.

Rated R. 94 mins. (D) (One Star)