Diplomatic Sense

Do you know how to read action movies or do you simply obey advertising hype? From Paris With Love delivers the minimal spills and thrills to those who like action movies for escapist release, yet beyond its hype, it is also politically aware filmmaking?without the sanctimoniousness of Syriana, United 93 or The Messenger. Those films pretend to address the post-9/11 crisis while From Paris With Love gets all up in the mess, making it personal and exciting. James Reece (the elegantly drawn Jonathan Rhys Meyers, using a perfect American accent) is a Yank brainiac stationed at the U.S. Embassy in Paris and living with a fashion-forward French girlfriend. Secretly working for the CIA, Reece longs to move up the ranks until partnered with wild-man agent Charlie Wax (John Travolta), who shows him the violent, dangerous side of espionage. Giddily succinct in ways literal-minded folk will not appreciate, From Paris With Love is an object lesson in the realities of what the Obama administration once euphemized as ?man-made disaster.? The very words ?war on terror? make Reece recoil, and the film virtually shudders with disorienting, overlapping dissolves: Reece gets awakened to the other side of diplomacy. If you?ve learned how to read action films (as in the way Westerns allegorize our moral and political history), the movie gains an enlightened purpose. From Paris With Love engages both your social and visceral senses. Its title riffs on the second James Bond film From Russia With Love (1963), which romanticized Cold War tensions, but it also announces producer Luc Besson?s solidarity with the United States? war on terror. Besson?s timely, sexy, funny action movies never distract from the contemporary view of moral and social complexities. From The Fifth Element to District B-13 and Angel-A, Besson?s Euro-trash sensibility mixes Continental high- and low-life and ethnic diversity to demonstrate first-hand (and in the imagination) how the contemporary West wrestles with post-Colonial problems of immigration, global crime and terrorism. Not lofty, Besson knows the threat?and the ideals?that are involved. His action aesthetic parallels the humanist art-studies of the Dardennes Brothers. Besson?s just got a faster engine. John Travolta?s Charlie Wax performance is key to this film?s genre revision. Burly, bald and goateed, he plays the ugly (corrupted) American who saves Reece?s ass?and saves the day for all surrender monkeys. Travolta deliberately burlesques his Pulp Fiction role the way Brando parodied The Godfather in The Freshman. This jest reclaims the political significance that Quentin Tarantino has extracted from genre movies. (Reece?s answer to Wax?s Star Trek quiz anticipates his ultimate character revelation.) The brainless vengeance that made Inglourious Basterds an appalling historical fantasy is corrected with Besson?s principled view of contemporary attacks on freedom. Wax?s vulgarity clarifies how political operatives act on their own self-interests. This point is less complicated than in the thanklessly received CIA melodrama The Good Shepherd. That?s where director Pierre Morel?s efficiency matters. A game-changing dinner revelation rivals the astonishing dinner scene in Morel?s Taken. It takes From Paris With Love closer to the heart of war-on-terror complications?the difficulty of personal trust and global idealism. It?s all allegorized in action motifs from six-on-one martial arts combat (?I just gave you a Shaw Brothers Kung Fu Show,? Wax tells Reece) to a bazooka-on-the-highway chase that outclasses Q.T.?s piddling Death Proof. Besson and Morel raise the stakes above Q.T.?s yahoo quotient. From Paris With Love showcases the most disturbing blood- splattered walls since Spielberg?s Munich. Besson, Morel and screenwriter Adi Hasak accept that responsibility, having Reece catch his own blood-smeared reflection in a mirror. It?s also a moment of audience reckoning. The wake-up shot. There?s a lot of character sketching, as when Reece briefly describes his New York projects background or Wax regrets his own wayward youth then laments France?s own housing projects: ?In Paris, I thought the shitholes would be nicer.? Yet, their survival rampages through the city of lights accumulate undeniable details of conflicted men caught up in modern, undeclared urban warfare. ?What if it never ends? What if we can?t beat these guys?? Reece says in a panic. Wax responds with the toughest macho/moral conundrum since Peckinpah. Action movies are not made in a vacuum. Besson lets Hasak inflect this thriller with genuine ethical suspense?and that?s also how it should be read. Reece?s movement from politesse to self-interest disproves the old maxim ?the personal is political.? Since 9/11, the new reality is that geopolitics is violence. Reece and Wax bond over chess and guns, strategy and violence?a more informed quintessence of war than The Hurt Locker. -- From Paris with Love Directed by Pierre Morel Runtime: 92 min.