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Feb1️⃣1️⃣
Movie feels like a snow day ❄️
#FromParisWithLove (2010)
Charlie Wax has a shootout in a restaurant and finds Cocaine (Snow or Schnee in german) in the ceiling of a Chinese restaurant
#JohnTravolta #JonathanRhysMeyers
#Bales2026FilmChallenge
#FilmMastodon
Feb1️⃣1️⃣
Movie feels like a snow day ❄️
#FromParisWithLove (2010)
Charlie Wax has a shootout in a restaurant and finds Cocaine (Snow or Schnee in german) in the ceiling of a Chinese restaurant
#JohnTravolta #JonathanRhysMeyers
#FromParisWithLove (2010)
In Paris, a young employee in the office of the US Ambassador hooks up with an American spy looking to stop a terrorist attack in the city.
#SpyMovies #FilmMastodon
Wax Off: The Hollow Cool of From Paris with Love
Pierre Morel’s From Paris with Love (2010) is one of those action movies that thinks it’s cooler than it is, and worse, assumes the audience will be impressed just because it remembers other, actually cool movies. From its title — a hollow echo of the 1963 James Bond film From Russia with Love — to its cringeworthy meta-reference to Pulp Fiction, the film announces its referentiality without ever earning it. This isn’t homage; it’s regurgitation.
The plot is mostly noise: James Reese (Jonathan Rhys Meyers), a young U.S. embassy aide in Paris, finds himself partnered with Charlie Wax (John Travolta), a swaggering, trigger-happy American spook. Travolta plays Wax like someone who’s been told he’s the coolest guy in the room and is trying desperately to believe it. That might have worked if the script had the wit or irony to back it up. It doesn’t.
Travolta’s casting is a particularly transparent bit of intertextual bait. At one point, his character references Pulp Fiction’s iconic “Royale with Cheese” line as if expecting applause for simply remembering it. This moment, presumably meant to be clever, instead lands like a desperate reach: “Look, it’s John Travolta! And he remembers that other, much better movie he was in!” But who doesn’t remember that line? It’s not wit; it’s Wikipedia.
If the filmmakers truly wanted to play with self-reference, they could’ve had Wax walk into a Burger King and order a Whopper. That would at least function as a sly subversion — a belated, B-movie payoff to Vincent Vega’s Euro-fast-food musings. But From Paris with Love doesn’t aim for subversion. It aims for recognition, and recognition alone. Its humor is content with being juvenile, and its attitude is all surface.
Wax himself is a clown masquerading as a badass. His introduction — detained by French Customs for refusing to part with his favorite energy drink — is meant to establish his chaotic rogue credentials. But instead, it highlights the movie’s inability to think through its own set pieces. We later learn that the energy drink cans contain components of a concealed firearm, and Wax smugly explains that he couldn’t “risk them finding out.” But he literally ensured they’d find out by throwing a tantrum at customs. This isn’t anti-authoritarian cleverness; it’s just bad writing.
The film’s most unintentionally hilarious moment comes when Wax guns down a Chinese restaurant that’s secretly a drug front. In a scene that feels like it wandered in from a slapstick parody, cocaine pours out of the bullet holes in the walls like drywall insulation made of powdered narcotics. It’s the kind of visual gag that might’ve worked in Cheech and Chong — you half expect Wax to light up the building and freebase it. The fact that the movie plays this sequence without a hint of irony tells you everything you need to know about its tone.
Despite Travolta’s effort to bring energy and attitude to the role, Wax never achieves anything close to iconic status. He’s closer to Terl from Battlefield Earth than to Tony Manero or Vincent Vega — a caricature of cool rather than the real thing. The film leans on Travolta’s presence the way a rickety plot leans on clichés: without him, there’s nothing holding it up.
In the end, From Paris with Love isn’t about Paris, love, or espionage — it’s about bad decisions. It wants to be Tarantino without the dialogue, Bond without the class, and Crank without the guts. What it delivers is a parody of itself, minus the self-awareness. If there’s anything memorable here, it’s not the film — it’s the reminder that knowing what cool looks like is not the same thing as being cool.
Works Cited
From Paris with Love. Directed by Pierre Morel, performances by John Travolta and Jonathan Rhys Meyers, EuropaCorp, 2010.
Related
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t40DINNGjYE&pp=ygUcZnJvbSBwYXJpcyB3aXRoIGxvdmUgdHJhaWxlcg%3D%3D
Leaving you with high fives and higher spirits as we ride into the night. 🙏
Rest well and dream big; more #Dressage adventures await come morning! 🌜
📸©FEI/ Liz Gregg
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