With Valentine’s Day fast approaching, romantic films fashioned for lovey-dovey couples are shooting onto the screens faster than a fleet of Cupid’s arrows. “From Paris with Love” is not one of them.

Don’t let the name deceive you: there is nothing lovable about this film. The movie starts off with a “Bourne”-like quality of suspense and intrigue catalyzed by Irish heartthrob Jonathan Rhys Meyers, who plays character James Reese, a young CIA official revving for his first field job. For all of 10 minutes, the cinematography appears to be wonderfully creative, the soundtrack enticing and the plot promising. Then, John Travolta enters the picture. Loud-mouthed, uncouth and dressed in an outfit that would put Hulk Hogan to shame, Travolta struts on screen in the character of Reese’s assigned partner, rogue agent Charlie Wax.

From his very first line of dialogue (or, rather, string of expletives), Travolta’s character completely spoils the vibe of the film, transforming it from a potentially decent thriller to a horribly trashy, hideously violent, half-hearted comedy. Thereafter, the movie is one long series of agonizingly contrived chase scenes. As Reese and Wax race to the anti-climatic conclusion of the film, they bust an illicit cocaine-dealing ring in Parisian China Town, shoot the streets to pieces with their absurdly oversized guns and trace the movements of an implausible terrorist organization, all the while leaving a wake of destruction behind them. Their seemingly pointless mission is littered with superfluous sub-plots – flashes of intimacy between Reese and his beautifully deceptive French girlfriend, Caroline, moments of male bonding between Reese and Wax (something like “Starsky and Hutch” gone even more wrong) and ludicrous attempts to give the film a deeper meaning by linking it to the War on Terror.

Clocking in at the shockingly short length of one hour and 30 minutes, “From Paris with Love” ineffectively endeavors to throw in a little bit of everything: comedy, violence, romance, espionage and current hot topics. The result is catastrophic, and not in a good way. Any acting talent from the cast is diffused by their dysfunctional pairing (John Travolta should have stopped playing the “bad boy” card decades ago), and the terribly muddled plot leaves the framework of the film in shambles. Crude humor is interspersed with unceremonious killings; romance is intertwined with unfortunate dialogue; and attempts to give the movie a global edge render the result hilariously bad. As plot lines criss-cross and zig-zag off the screen, they swerve in such different directions that they fail to make any sort of sense, right up to the downright dull ending.

It never does become clear what Reese and Wax were meant to accomplish, and little particulars are never resolved, such as the question of how the lugging around of a Chinese vase filled with top-notch cocaine throughout the first half of the film was in any way linked to the terrorist organization introduced later on in the story. Furthermore, the sheer amount of loud, unnecessary violence and carnage leaves the audience clutching their armrests for no apparent purpose. In fact, there was so much unwarranted slaughter that the film’s title, misleading as it is now, should be changed to “From Paris with Blood.”

So, as you contemplate which romantic film to go see this coming Valentine’s Day, stay clear of this crash-and-burn wreckage of a movie. And should you decide to hazard a peek – bring earplugs.