On the couch

Peter Madden reviews From Paris with Love and Clash of the Titans.

From Paris with Love (3stars)
Directed by: Pierre Morel
Starring: John Travolta, Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, Melissa Mars.

Looking like a fat version of Colin Farrell in Daredevil, John Travolta makes a surprisingly tolerable co-lead in Pierre Morel’s dumb but fun action romp From Paris with Love.
Teamed up with Jonathan Rhys Meyers, an inexperienced intelligence operative masquerading as a diplomatic aide for the American ambassador in Paris, Travolta plays Charlie Wax, a crack-special-black-super-ops-ninja-agent-guy (delete or add terms as you desire, the upshot is, he’s bulletproof and badass) who’s in town to do… something involving drugs or revenge.
That’s the first weird thing about From Paris with Love – the complete lack of a story. That’s not to say that things don’t happen in a semi-coherant and linear fashion. They do. It’s just that none of the set pieces seem to have much relation to the ones that preceed or follow them.
The only vague segueway is Wax shouting something about how Rhys-Meyers innocent waif needs to grow up, toughen up or cop on before the pair barrel off to kill another bunch of “turr-ists” hired from Central Casting for the day.
Not to pigeonhole folk, but the script was co-written by Luc Besson and if ever there was man with a penchant for style over substance, it’s him.
Anyway, while nothing really makes any sense, there is a certain A-Team (from the 80s) charm about the whole affair. Good guys = bullet-proof, bad guys = life expectancy of an egg in an earthquake.
Travolta (and his normally well disguised through editing stunt team) is untouchable as Wax and plays the morally ambiguous good guy with the sort of fervour that he normally reserves for bad guys. It’s good craic to watch.
Rhys-Meyers is surprisingly watchable too, coming across as believably terrified and confused when his cartoonish partner does something that would make Wile E Coyote raise an eyebrow.
Which is about the best thing you can say about the film. it’s as much fun as watching a episode of Roadrunner. And about as realistic.

Clash of the Titans (1 star)
Directed by: Louis Leterrier
Starring: Sam Worthington, Gemma Arterton, Mads Mikkelsen, Alexa Davalos.
I take back everything I said about Percy Jackson… last week, particularly its slightly loose interpretation of Greek myths. I take it all back because I’ve seen what happens when perfectly good stories that have lasted the test of thousands of years are trampled beneath the fell hooves of Clash of the Titans.
Directed by Louis Leterrier, of Transporter and The Incredible Hulk fame, Clash comes with, at the very least, a visual pedigree that made the trailers for the flick something of an eye-opening experience.
TITANS. WILL. CLASH. the teasers proclaimed. “Awesome” the poor, deluded audiences said. “Despite that appalling catchline this film looks fantabulous!”
Unfortunately Leterrier’s grasp of flashy action can do little to make this vague mish-mash of other films’ versions of the story – Ray Harryhausen’s in particular.
This version places Perseus, son of Zeus, as the son of an honest, hardrworking, gods hating fisherman played (too briefly) by Pete Postlethwait. Unaware of his godly background, Perseus, played by mini-Crowe Sam Worthington, has grown up in an Ancient Greece where people are losing faith in the gods.
An unfortunate case of sacrilege leaves his family dead and Perseus on a quest to plunder the best bits of a bunch of other films. So, armed with a list of set pieces, he heads off with Mads Mikkelsen and a shower of forgetable soldiers to save a princess that you don’t really know or care about.
While From Paris with Love at least had the courtesy to know that it was completely crazy and indulge this fact, Clash is a poefaced wander into CGI-land with nary a hint of craic about it. Monsters of peculiar and imaginative design roll along and are either befriended or dispatched with about as much passion as a set of ninja accountants calculate the tip on a lunch bill.
In the background Hades – Ralph Fiennes, looking like the lovechild of Fagin and Lord Voldemort – annoys Zeus – Liam Neeson dressed like Brian Blessed in The Disco Knights of the Round Table – and threatens the world with unleashing the Kraken.
By the time this happens, however, you’ll be so bored and desperate for the film to end that you won’t appreciate the one kind of interesting thing in the film.