Christ this is bad. Not just regular bad either. Not ‘half-assed–I–knew-this-would-suck-Michael-Bay bad’. This is ‘Luc Besson bad’….
Hand in hand with director/lenser Pierre Morel, Besson has upped the anti of carpology once more – no easy task when you’ve once cast Lee Evans as an intergalactic bellhop – leaping back into the bonkers but brilliant cartoon action world usually lorded over by Jason Statham.
The Stath is obviously off doing something ridiculous with Jet Lee this month however, so it’s up to mid 90’s would-be action star John Travolta to fill out the lead, and he does it with a touch of the idiotic menace he bought to Broken Arrow et al, sneering, bellowing and displaying some spot-on comedy timing as he and Jonathan Reece Meyers destroy half of Paris as they try to stop a terrorist plot –yep, it’s Team America done by Europeans.
There’s very little to say critically about this, it looms like Galactus, a force above and beyond traditional ideals of good or bad. It’s loud, pig-ignorant, racist, sexist…and manages to make none of it matter. This is an ACTION MOVIE!!!!!! And is happy to conform to everything that means:
Odd-couple maverick cops? Check.
Guns that inexplicably carry 3000 rounds? Check
Show-piece with a rocket launcher? You get the idea.
John's revenge on the barber was a little over the top...
Travolta is a little too old to do this convincingly, his Charlie Wax (Charlie Wax!!) coming over like a tubby, dumbed down John McClaine, but his knack with preposterous one-liners is the movie’s saving grace as we trawl through exploding identikit euro villains on our way to take down Mr.Big.
Yes there’s a crap twist that’s practically telegraphed over the opening credits, yes Travolta’s bald/beard look is outrageously stupid, but who cares. Stylish crap that you can buy your 15 year old cousin for his birthday and never give him, it confirms Besson’s place at the top of the shiteheap –high praise indeed!
