In the interest of full disclosure, in its final stretch From Paris With Love is inadvertently hilarious (Rhys Meyers gets most of the intended laughs; he's halfway to good in this mess). The dramatic climax involving a beautiful suicide bomber is particularly funny. The revelation that she is bad to the bone leads to great bafflement on the part of her former fiancÉ, who is crushed by her betrayal. "She never talked about her life, and I never thought to ask," he says. Could screenwriter Adi Hasak possibly have come up with a better line illustrating the depth of this beautiful love?

But that's not the worst of Hasak's tone-deaf script. As you're watching Travolta lumber through his stunts here, his Pulp Fiction comeback seems like a sweet, distant memory. That is, until Hasak works in a direct reference to one of Travolta's iconic bits from that film, the speech about a "Royale with cheese." Travolta delivers his 2010 version of his 1994 lines with the good humor you'd expect from an essentially likeable actor, but its very presence signifies something wistful and sad. Travolta is dolled up in his cool suit, waiting to be touched by coolness again. "Tell me that wasn't some impressive [expletive deleted]," Charlie says at one point. Would that it were.