From Paris with Love
2010 action film produced and co-written by Luc Besson and starring John Travolta and Jonathan Rhys Meyers.
Wax: Nice work, Reese. |
James Reese (Meyers) is the personal aide to U.S. Ambassador in France. Unbeknownst to either the Ambassador or his beautiful French girlfriend Reese is leading a double life as a low level CIA operative. He juggles his responsibilities until he is ordered to team up with brash, trigger-happy, loose cannon Charlie Wax (Travolta).
Very violent Hilarity Ensues.
Tropes used in From Paris with Love include:
- Actor Allusion: Wax's favourite food is a 'Royale with Cheese'
- Anyone Can Die
- Anti-Hero: Charlie Wax.
- Awesomeness By Analysis
Wax: How long do you think it'd take to run down nine flights of stairs?. . .Fifty-four seconds. Five seconds to cross the lobby…and four to get to the car. |
- Badass: Wax.
- Badass Beard: Adorns Travolta as Wax. To emphasize the point, comes with...
- Bald of Awesome: Again, Wax.
- Berserk Button: Charlie and the Chinese restaurant not having good egg foo young.
- Bilingual Bonus: The Chinese restaurant in which cocaine is stored in the ceiling is called "Les Lotus des Neiges, which means "The Snow Lotus" in French.
- Bittersweet Ending.
- Bond One-Liner: "Wax on, Wax off". (Doubles as a Shout-Out to The Karate Kid, written by Luc Besson's writing partner Robert Mark Kamen.)
- Boom! Headshot!: The famous dinner scene. It wound up being a meme.
- Chessmaster: Reese's opening-scene game with his boss defines his character from the get-go. It's implied that this is the characteristic that lands Reese his big break. Wax is also a speed chessmaster, boardering on Clock King.
- Chekhov's Gun: the vase full of cocaine.
- Reese's ring counts as well, as does the African Aid Summit mentioned at the beginning of the movie
- Cloak and Dagger: referenced by the characters
- Concealment Equals Cover: Happens repeatedly, but does get subverted once: Wax fires his pistol at a mook who's hiding safely behind a wall. Then he runs out of ammo, grabs an assault rifle and proceeds to shoot the mook through the wall.
- Dirty Cop: Charlie has shades of this.
- Fake American: Reese is played by Irish actor Jonathan Rhys Meyers.
- Fake Nationality: Reese's French fiancee Caroline is played by Polish actress Kasia Smutniak.
- Gadget Watches: Wax gets one that can direct a satellite.
- Gay Paree
- High Heel Face Turn: Played with, but ultimately averted.
- Hollywood Silencer: Wax's silenced guns barely make a click and a whistle when they fire.
- Honey Trap
- I Call It Mrs.Jones: Wax's gun, which he smuggles into France in dozens of cans of energy drink and sings to.
- Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy: the only reason Wax manages to stay alive.
- Jerkass: The red-haired ambassador, who despite being told of a possible assassination attempt, and actually seeing a suicide bomber's car explode in front of her, is unable to understand the concept of "security breach" and blames the entire affair on Reese.
- John Travolta Is About To Shoot You
- Large Ham: Wax is hammy even by Travolta's standards.
- Pretty Little Headshots: Mostly averted, but used for style and emotional impact, at the climax.
- And to avoid a huge explosion.
- Men Are the Expendable Gender: Averted; Wax has no problem shooting a female terrorist without turning evil. When Reese shoots Caroline at the end he isn't demonised either - it's sad he had to do it but the film is clear he had no choice.
- The Mole: Caroline.
- One-Scene Wonder: The unnamed agent that drives Charlie to intercept the bomb car is one hell of a driver.
- Shout-Out: Wax gets himself a royale with cheese.
- Surprise Checkmate
- Terrorists Without a Cause: We never really get a clear cut answer on why Reese's fiance is plotting to suicide bomb an African aid summit other than saying she was looking for a purpose and a man she met six years ago explained things to her. Arguably parodied because Wax explains a bit during the early part of the film, but Reese (and, since we're viewing the scene through his eyes, the audience) is too high on cocaine to understand it.
- The Triads and the Tongs: Wax and Reese have a run in with the Snakeheads.
- Was It All a Lie?: Caroline says it wasn't, even if her feelings aren't enough to stop her trying to push the trigger on her bomb.
- Possibly-- as we see a few seconds later when Wax disconnects it, the cord to deactivate the bomb was right above the trigger. It's never made clear which she was reaching for- the trigger, or the cord.
- Which would turn it into Suicide by Cop - Caroline must've known she'd get shot if she moved her hand anywhere close to the trigger.
- Possibly-- as we see a few seconds later when Wax disconnects it, the cord to deactivate the bomb was right above the trigger. It's never made clear which she was reaching for- the trigger, or the cord.
- Wham! Line: Wax: "That's the call we've been waiting for." *BANG*
- Wok Fu: There is a cross between a gunfight and a fistfight in a Chinese restaurant.