John Travolta and Titan Poker, what do they have in common? Well, the right answer is that they both do appear on the silver screen at the same time. That’s right, Titan Poker has been doing some pretty aggressive marketing lately, and they have struck a deal for Travolta’s new movie “From Paris with Love” directed by Luc Besson of “Transporter” fame.
The deal will involve the main character, some kind of heavy handed assassin, playing some good ol’ fashioned poker on Titan Poker. Additionally, the film will also be the featured in an online promo held at Titan Poker, in an effort to maximize the effectiveness of the campaign.
The film will see Travolta opposite Jonathan Rhys Myers, of Velvet Goldmine fame. Here is the plot, according to Wikipedia:
A personal aide to U.S. Ambassador in France, James Reece (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) has an enviable life in Paris and a beautiful French girlfriend, but his real passion is his side job as a low-level operative for the CIA. All James wants is to become a bona fide agent and see some real action. So when he is offered his first senior-level assignment, he cannot believe his good luck until he meets his new partner, special agent Charlie Wax (John Travolta) – a trigger-happy, wisecracking, loose cannon who’s been sent to Paris to stop a terrorist attack.
Wax leads James on a white-knuckle shooting spree through the Parisian underworld that has James praying for his desk job. But when James discovers he is a target of the same crime ring they are trying to bust, he realizes there is no turning back…and that Wax himself might be his only hope for making it through the next forty-eight hours alive.
Ultimately James learns that the terrorists, who he and Wax wiped out mostly, are targeting a summit and that his fiancé Caroline is one of them. Caroline attempts to suicide bomb the summit while the last remaining terrorist tries to attack the US Motorcade with a car that has a bomb. Wax takes out the terrorist with a rocket launcher before he can do any damage and James confronts Caroline at the summit. He tries to convince her to stop and is apparently successful at first, but when Caroline reaches to trigger her bomb, James has no choice but to shoot her dead. Wax disarms the bomb and the threat is over.
Later, James, now an official agent, escorts Wax to his plane and Wax offers for James to be his full-time partner. The two play a game of chess and James reveals he now has the exact same gun as Wax, indicating he is more like Wax now than how he originally was.
The movie, in and of itself, has not gotten the overwhelmingly positive reviews of say, Avatar, but it has its moments. It currently holds a 35% rating on reviews aggregator Rotten Tomatoes. But to its defense, it’s an action flick, with guns and high speed car chases. If you expect too much from such a flick, you will be disappointed. So just go in with a clear mind and enjoy the brawn.
This is a new and interesting twist for the online poker world. While we have seen some of the bigger superstars appear on the silver screen before (Gus Hansen comes to mind), this marks the first time we’ve seen an online poker site being featured on its own. It will be interesting to see how effective this marketing strategy will be.