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Catholic movie review - From Paris With Love |
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By John Mulderig - Catholic News Service
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Thursday, 04 February 2010 |
Though at times it tries to pass itself off as a cautionary tale with serious moral overtones, the espionage thriller "From Paris With Love" (Lionsgate) for the most part registers instead as a straightforward buddy movie, and a gleefully violent one at that.
The initially ill-matched partners at the center of the story are
Paris-based American diplomat and low-level CIA agent James Reese
(Jonathan Rhys Meyers) and Charlie Wax (John Travolta), a trigger-happy
visiting operative Reese has been instructed to escort and assist.
Despite his aspirations to be a real spy, Reese's previous intelligence
work has been confined to activities like changing the license plates
on agency autos to prevent their being traced. So at first he looks
forward to this latest assignment as a chance to break into the big
leagues.
But Wax proves far more of a loose cannon than the buttoned-up Reece
had bargained for, and Wax's wild pursuit of drug dealers and
terrorists sees the pair cutting a bloody swath through the French
capital's criminal underworld.
Bewildered as the bullets -- and the bodies -- fly, Reese pauses
briefly to wash telltale gore off his face and stare glumly into the
mirror, wondering about it all. But the next moment he's off again, one
step behind Wax on their renewed rampage.
Reese's prolonged absence from home leads to friction with his live-in
Gallic girlfriend Caroline (Kasia Smutniak). Her somewhat surprising
depth of devotion has been signaled earlier by a scene in which she
proposed to Reese, presenting him with a wedding-bandlike ring that, so
she explained, had once belonged to her father.
Domestic tranquility suffers a further setback when Caroline, shopping
for dress material in a depressed neighborhood she wouldn't normally
frequent, spots Reese and Wax getting into an elevator with a
streetwalker in tow.
Though Reese ultimately has nothing to do with this shady lady the
newly minted pals have picked up in their travels, Wax and she share an
encounter in a bathroom raucous enough to be audible both to Reese and
to the audience.
Mulderig is on the staff of the Office for Film & Broadcasting of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. More reviews are available online at www.usccb.org/movies.
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While, as directed by Pierre Morel, the dialogue in Adi Hasak's
F-word-heavy script is occasionally amusing, this hardly compensates
for the fact that the film -- based on a story by Luc Besson --
glamorizes Wax's utter disregard for the lives of those on either side
of the law, unmistakably relishes the mayhem that results and presents
that tawdry restroom coupling as just another of Wax's endearing madcap
adventures.
The film contains constant, sometimes bloody action violence,
off-screen sexual activity with a prostitute, cohabitation, drug use, a
couple of profanities and pervasive rough and much crude language. The
USCCB Office for Film & Broadcasting classification is O -- morally
offensive. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is R --
restricted. Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian.
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