Didn't quite love "From Paris With Love"

I am not a film critic.  I have never been asked to summarize a dramatic series of monologues, explosions, love scenes, drug deals or life-altering existential crises on film into a letter grade or into any culturally symbolic placements of my left and/or right thumb. I am, however, an active analyst of pop culture who keeps a close eye on the media responsible for carrying out its dirty work (I’d like to thank my communications degree and my loving parents for sponsoring all the cheating it takes these days to earn one of them).
My position provides a fruitful sense of awareness. It allows me to almost simultaneously assess both a vulnerable piece of media and the attempts of my peers in punditry to do the same. Now that we’ve got my self-righteous attempts to provide background information out in the open, allow your reviewer at least one educated guess as to what might be rule number one in the film critic’s handbook: when approaching a cinematic feature of interest, remain calm, remain unbiased.
Pierre Morel’s “From Paris with Love” follows the story of James Reese, an assistant to the U.S. Ambassador to France (played by Jonathan Rhys Meyers) working as a double agent for a mysterious anti-terrorism unit who manifests itself only through a deep, ominous voice giving orders on a cell phone. Got your cliché radar switched on already? Good to hear you’re with me.
Take a look at Morel’s relatively skimpy directorial rap sheet and you’ll probably notice a common theme. Variety magazine’s Derek Elley sums it up within his review of “Taken,” the director’s fiscally profitable yet cerebrally hollow 2008 action-thriller starring Qui-Gon Jinn with a pistol, labeling it “a kick ass, pedal-to-the-metal actioner.”
The French born director has well proven his competence for the cheaply entertaining. The likely absence of the words “intellectually stimulating” or “groundbreaking” in describing his works can be soundly predicted from the moment a major film distribution company signs off the green light on another shoot/stab/blow/“F” ‘em up Morel production.
And here’s where we, members of a discerning audience looking to assess a film’s overall worth, reach a critical fork in the road. Should our personal loyalties be placed in favor of high culture or low culture, arcane thought or cheap thrills, deep-rooted meaning or bullets, babes or Bruckheimer? My thoughts on the matter are this: so long as a film chooses to go one route or the other without trying too hard to bridge either side, do your best to avoid condemning from across the lake.
With that being said, “From Paris With Love” successfully stayed aware of itself within its own boundaries as an explosive, white-knuckle action movie with plenty of laughs to go along with the bloodshed. Travolta’s character, Charlie Wax, is a personable wise cracking special agent with a tongue as sharp as his killer instinct. Red-blooded audiences everywhere will cheer on his unorthodox methods of carrying out the American way of putting a boot in your ass, not excluding the use of a prostitute’s services, as well as a certain powdery controlled substance, while on the job (each for Wax’s own strategic reasons, of course). Rhys-Meyers will likely fall short in leaving lasting impressions on his audiences (not including virile young teenage girls who fished their tickets to an R rated movie from their easygoing parents or a homeless man outside of the theater).
His character’s blandly predictable personality and development throughout the film does, however, act in accordance to the often amusing and time-honored “good cop/bad cop” antithesis played out in so many classics of the action movie genre; Wax makes another morally questionable move while Reese neurotically opposes before inevitably submitting to the whims of the more physically dominant and rashly motivated member of the crime-fighting twosome. Throw a knee-slapping gag line somewhere and there you have it, the formula for a rather hilarious big budget body count aggregator.
From a staunch capitalistic standpoint, the film critic’s one defining responsibility towards the public would involve deeming a movie as worthy or unworthy of its ticket price. If you’re too pretentious to make the trip to a movie theater for a cinematic thrill ride alone, save your money for the next Coen brothers’ film.  Otherwise go right ahead and exchange that $14 for a temporary escape from an all-too-real reality.