In a word, icky. It's a buddy comedy with zero chemistry between the buddies in which one is saddled with an unconvincing accent and distracted John Waters moustache and nothing particularly interesting to do while the other overacts wildly while being obviously replaced by a stunt double every time he has to actually move. Pierre Morel did remarkable work with Taken, which makes this all the more disappointing ... it's like he forgot every lesson learned about character and subtlety in his previous film and replaced all that good stuff with trite cliches and lazy writing. I fear for Morel's take on Dune.
From Paris With Love and Frozen - which I really, really like - are the subject of my weekly column over at Showcase. You'll find my full thoughts here.
From Paris With Love and Frozen - which I really, really like - are the subject of my weekly column over at Showcase. You'll find my full thoughts here.
Travolta looks terrible, the ridiculous gunplay reminds me of "Swordfish", and the "Royale with Cheese" line in the new trailers makes me want to stab someone in the junk.
I'm giving Morel a bit of a pass since the script is so obviously wretched. "Pulp Fiction" references? How very current of you, considering the children conceived that summer are now sophomores in high school.
The buddy cop/spy genre is so overplayed at this point I don't think we could find a fork big enough to test for done-ness. It looks like Kevin Smith's "Cop Out" will, unfortunately, be just as hackneyed and mirthless.
I found this film to be a passable time waster that could have benefited from a dose of the completely absurd over-the-top ridiculousness that redeemed TRANSPORTER II. As it was I was asked to believe the unbelievable and care about characters who were barely characters. If you're going to come with a half-assed script like this clearly was, you better go much further over the top than Morel was willing to. If only this was directed by the Yuen/Letterier team - they'd have known exactly how to handle this material. Their version would have had Travolta taking out 150 guys armed only with a roll of paper towels and a beautiful woman's thong.
I certainly am in no hurry to watch it again, but I didn't hate myself for sitting through the whole thing the way I did after, say, NINJA ASSASSIN or TAKING OF PELHAM 123 '09.