MANILA, Philippines--John Travolta is a big movie star, but he has the bad habit of choosing less than exceptional film projects to topbill. The best (or worst) example of this unfortunate penchant to shoot himself in the stellar foot is ?Battlefield Earth,? which turned off viewers and reviewers bigtime?and even ended up on some ?worst movies ever made? lists.

Travolta?s latest starrer, ?From Paris with Love,? isn?t quite as bad, but it won?t burnish the veteran actor?s screen image, either. In it, Travolta plays an anti-terrorism specialist who stops at absolutely nothing to foil a major terror threat.

Suicide bombing

His latest assignment is to thwart the suicide bombing of a big international conference in Paris. The City of Love has been transformed into a veritable garrison, but the suicide bomber has broken through the ?impenetrable? security cordon, so Travolta?s character has his work cut out for him to successfully accomplish his mission and prevent a major tragedy.

Travolta?s young partner is played by Jonathan Rhys-Meyer, whose character turns out to be intimately involved with another major player in the top-level conspiracy that surrounds the planned terror attack?only, he doesn?t know it.

So, Travolta also needs to protect his young partner from himself, so to speak, making his mission doubly difficult to pull off.

So far, so acceptable. Later in the movie, however, the plot?s progression starts to fall apart when, in the name of complicating subplotting, the film piles one distraction and detour on top of one another to keep the production?s excitement level up.

That?s par for the anti-terrorism course, but it ends up providing too much distraction for the movie?s own good. As one red herring after another doesn?t pan out, the viewer gets increasingly frustrated and finally decides to switch off before the production has done its worst.

Another major turn-off is the film?s cavalier attitude in relation to the fear factor that?s supposed to drive it to its awesomely startling and thrilling conclusion. This all-important thrust gets derailed, because some characters in the movie don?t take the central terrorist threat itself seriously. If they don?t get scared, why should the film?s viewers care one whit about how the terrorist drama finally plays itself out?

Exciting scene

To illustrate, in one long, exciting scene, Travolta practically kills himself to save some conference delegates from a car bomber. However, when the head of the delegation is advised that her convoy should take an alternate route, she sourly and cavalierly nixes this suggestion.

Item 2: After the car bombing threat has been foiled, viewers are astounded to learn that the conference hasn?t been canceled, or at least postponed, due to the flagrant breach in security, so the delegates? lives are still in danger!

Item 3: To top it all off, the surly delegation head gets all ticked off, instead of being grateful that her life has been saved, complains about the delay in the conference?s start, and demands that Travolta?s character be fired! That?s when viewers? empathy switches off?for good.