When I was a journalist working abroad, I was approached by an attaché at the U.S. embassy about helping with a “sensitive problem.” The CIA trying to recruit a low-level asset, I assumed. I didn’t bite.

But all these years later I wonder what James Bond adventures I’d missed.

A new spy movie with a postcard name — “From Paris With Love” — offers up such a fantasy. It’s now playing at Carmike 12 and Greenville Grande.

In it, an aide to the U.S. ambassador in France is living large, enjoying his tour in the City of Lights, wining and dining with his Gallic girlfriend, even helping out with minor assignments for the CIA.

Is he satisfied? No, he longs for action as a secret agent, taking on a bigger assignment for the CIA.

Can our boy handle it alone? No way. So the CIA partners him with an experienced operative named Charlie Wax.

Jonathan Rhys Meyers (you’ve seen him as the young king in TV’s “The Tudors”) plays the wannabe spy. And John Travolta (in his scary “Taking of Pelham 1 2 3” mode) is the hardened old pro.

Meyers offers up all the foolish naiveté you’d expect of the foil in this bang-bang action thriller. And Travolta tries to channel Bruce Willis, head shaven, goatee in place, a real hardcase.

What we get is a version of the cop buddy movie (like “Lethal Weapon” or the upcoming “Cop Out”), where a wisecracking, trigger-happy rogue leads his nervous-Nellie partner into danger.

Don’t expect more of “From Paris With Love” than mindless action, a shoot-em-up that takes you on a tour of Paris with guns ablazing. A great moviegoers’ diversion on a night with nothing better to do.

As for Travolta, you’ll love him or hate him in this role. He makes quirky movie choices (an angel in “Michael,” father of a talking baby in “Look Who’s Talking,” or a mother in “Hairspray”).

He’s an actor who’s had his ups and downs, but remains forgivable for delivering such gems as “Saturday Night Fever” and “Pulp Fiction.”

Written and produced by Luc Besson, and directed by Pierre Morel (the team that gave us the recent Liam Neeson thriller “Taken”), you can count on action.

Is John Travolta up to it? The 56-year-old actor says, “The whole movie’s been not easy for sure. It’s not been a walk in the park. I giggle because I’m older than I’m behaving. ... Every time I do a stunt where I’m rolling over a table or jumping in there with two guns, I giggle. Because theoretically you should be winding down at my age, not winding up. This is probably the most action-packed film I’ve ever been in.”

For a guy who has starred both as a middle-aged doofus in “Old Dogs” and as a stone-cold killer in action-meister John Woo’s “Broken Arrow,” this movie is quite a combo for Travolta.

“From Paris With Love” is an interesting postcard to his long-time fans.

Shirrel Rhoades is a media/marketing consultant based in Key West, Fla. Contact him at srhoades@aol.com.