Starring John Travolta and Jonathan Rhys Meyers. Rated 14A. Opens Friday, February 5, at the Cinemark Tinseltown

The alpha credits of From Paris With Love—ostensibly directed by Pierre Morel and scripted by Adi Hasak from an original story by Luc Besson (who also produced here)—are about as trustworthy as the ones appended to TV’s Deadwood and The Sopranos. Like HBO’s two Davids, Chase and Milch, Besson clearly had the last word on just about everything (hence the plethora of fast cars, leggy Eastern European femmes fatales, et cetera).

Now for the plot (such as it is).

James Reese (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) is a brainy intelligence operative who never gets to kill anybody. Then he is teamed up with Charlie Wax (John Travolta), a secret agent who is said to average a corpse per hour. (Actually, this seems to be something of an underestimate.) After slaughtering hordes of Chinese gangsters (in massacres that would be offensive if they were not also backhanded homages to John Woo), this tough-talking American turns his guns on a bunch of Pakistani terrorists (whose motivations are never explained).

In a career of weird performances (remember Battlefield Earth?), the role of Charlie Wax will doubtless stand out in the John Travolta book of acting infamy. Burly, baldheaded, goateed, and about as subtle as an out-of-control express train, Travolta plays the first half of the film like an albino Samuel L. Jackson on steroids and the second like a slightly more soulful Bruce Willis. The end result is a bad muthafucka who becomes a bad motherfucker (a transformation that absolutely nobody should devoutly wish).

If From Paris With Love weren’t so damned lazy (only a battle on a circular staircase shows any visual panache), it would doubtless seem even more vile than it already does. The sooner this film is forgotten, the better for all concerned.