Freeview film of the day: From Paris with Love

From Paris with Love ★★
PREMIERE 10.00-11.50pm C5

Directed by Pierre Morel from a story by Luc Besson, From Paris with Love ploughs a similar furrow to Morel’s Taken, which defined the 21st-century French action movie. Cue lots of tooled-up, screeching, macho thrills around the French capital as a conventionally staged cat-and-mouse unfurls between CIA agent Jonathan Rhys Meyers and visiting shaven-headed, loudmouth investigator John Travolta (“Do I look like I play board games?”) while assorted foreign terrorists and surprise sleeper agents try to kill them. Clearly intended as a potential odd-couple franchise, its poor box office may have put paid to that. Still, with earplugs in, the spectacle of Travolta and Rhys Meyers barrelling around Paris may pass the evening away.