This French buddy cop action comedy owes its limited success to John Travolta. If you don’t love him stay an ocean away from this flick
New director Pierre Morel is better known for his twenty years of experience as a cinematographer than for anything related to directing. Even so, the camera work is this smashing action flick is what makes it fun to watch and Morel’s expertise made it happen. Of course the inimitable John Travolta in a bad-guy role makes it fun, too. He takes what would otherwise be just another slap-dash gun fest and turns it into something fantastic. Not fantastic in the sense that everyone will love it; it’s just that Travolta’s acting puts it over the top. When John enters the scene it ceases to be a film that takes itself too seriously. There is a joke in every scene along with the lighting fast action and no holds barred murderous mayhem.
As it turns out Mr. Morel has a way with bullets. This flick is half great gunplay and half great action photography. Travolta is Charlie Wax, a “special agent” sent to partner with US Embassy nerd James Reese (Jonathan Rhys Meyers). It is not completely clear what Reese is doing planting bugs in foreign embassies or what kind of a special agent Wax really is. All the better, nobody cares about such details anyway. Let’s get to the shooting, and fast.
As for the shooting, Charlie Wax is a combination of James Bond, Dirty Harry and Sherlock Holmes. The character is a lawman who plays by his own rules. He is good in that he serves and protects but he is bad because he shoots first and asks questions later. In the end he is good because he never makes any mistakes or shoots the wrong people. So relax, no guilt trips in this flick. No film noir.
Wax knows whom the drug dealers are, where they hide out, where they hide their drugs and how to get to the top man. Even better, he does all of his figuring in a single day of story time while knocking off a nogoodnick an hour. This compresses nicely into the 92 minutes of film time, providing a flying body an average of every 3 minutes. This is clumped up into several wonderfully murderous orgies of automatic weapons fire.
Add to this a couple of nice hand to hand martial arts scenes and a well done car chase involving Travolta and a rocket propelled grenade launcher and you have a film that never lets up. It is action all the way. In the few brief interludes without gun smoke Travolta uses straight man Rhys Meyers to come up with some passable buddy-cop humor courtesy of screen writer Adi Hasak. At least it is good if you like John Travolta playing a bad guy action hero. If you don’t like Travolta in that role, or in any role, give this film a miss. Rent “Face/Off” or perhaps the iconic “Pulp Fiction.” Adding to the humor of this film is a couple references to the French version of the Big Mac.
If you watched “Face/Off” and spent more time thinking about Nicholas Cage this might not be the film for you. If you watched Travolta in “Pulp Fiction” and liked the laid-back philosophy of Vincent Vega and the Tarantino dialogue be forewarned; this is not that film. But if you love Travolta you will love this film. That is, if the brainless and predictable plot is not too much of a bother. For action buffs and aficionados of the tried and true buddy cop formula it will be easy enough to put aside the negligible plot vehicle (most could figure out the ending in their sleep).
In comparison with “Face/Off” director Morel competes head to head with John Woo in the action department and doesn’t come up short. But in the end it is John who makes the experience worth remembering.
Directed by: Pierre Morel
Starring: John Travolta, Jonathan Rhys Meyers
Release: February 5, 2010
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