7. "Two Agents. One City. No Merci." - From Paris With Love
The Tagline: "Two Agents. One City. No Merci." It's a fine line between stupid and clever when it comes to taglines. Taglines are a precise art, and if the marketing team are going to go for funny, they better damn well make it work. For generic Pierre Morel-helmed actioner From Paris With Love, someone took the French flavour of the movie, brilliantly figured the French "merci" sounded like the English "mercy," slapped "No Merci" on the poster and figured it was ten minutes' work well spent. The reason this backfires is because pretty much everyone in the English-speaking world knows that "merci" means "thank you" in French, and that "no" means "no" in English. It also means that, if you ever found yourself looking at a chrome-domed John Travolta firing a bazooka out of a car on the From Paris With Love poster and weren't already thinking, "No thank you," the tagline does it for you. In two languages!
Lover of film, writer of words, pretentious beyond belief. Thinks Scorsese and Kubrick are the kings of cinema, but PT Anderson and David Fincher are the dashing young princes. Follow Brogan on twitter if you can take shameless self-promotion: @BroganMorris1
