John Travolta in 'From Paris With Love'

One of the first bursts of action in "From Paris With Love" takes place in a Chinese restaurant, with the loose-cannon CIA agent Charlie Wax (John Travolta) gunning down a dozen expendable Asians. His new partner, James Reese (Jonathan Rhys Meyers), asks fearfully, "How many more do you think there are?"

Wax's answer: "Last census? About a billion."

That line is worth a rimshot, but it also shows that this French-made action flick can be as blithely bigoted as anything out of Hollywood. Director Pierre Morel and producer Luc Besson (collaborators on the 2008 B-movie "Taken") don't stop there: The Arab terrorists could have been drawn by a Danish cartoonist, while the women are treated so badly you may wonder what they ever did to screenwriter Adi Hasak. For good measure, Travola adopts a street-jive delivery that borders on blackface: "Let's par-tay!"

The only love in "From Paris With Love" blossoms between two white men with guns: Wax, a trash-talking baldie, and Reese, a diplomatic aide whose only combat experience is on a chessboard. Their mission is to thwart a Parisian drug ring, or a bomb plot, or something. Mostly the film consists of bullet shells and shards of plate glass.

The movie wavers uncertainly between Wax's cartoonish violence and Reese's moral horror, but the effect is jarring: It's difficult to enjoy the one while trying to absorb the other. The climax is a shocker, but only because it's so thoroughly hateful. In the film's closing scene, one of self-congratulatory laughter and macho pistol-waving, it's no longer clear whether the good guys won.