Luc Besson was the man behind two of the most critically acclaimed action movies in Leon (aka The Professional) and La Femme Nikita. In the last several years, Besson (as writer and producer) has been churning out a steady stream of Eurotrash action flicks such as The Transporter, Taken, and the parkour heavy District B13. Colombiana is the latest film to come off the Besson assembly line and feels like a greatest hits highlight reel. It borrows many elements from Besson's previous works. In fact, Colombiana evolved from story ideas from an unproduced sequel to Leon, entitled Mathilde, which would have starred a Natalie Portman's character.
The movie opens in Bogota of 1993 where a nine-year old Cateleya Restrepo (Amandla Stenberg) witnesses the murder of her parents by drug lord Don Luis (Beto Benites). Cateleya escapes by stabbing Luis's right-hand man, Marco (Jordi Molla), in the…well, right hand. What follows is a thrilling parkour sequence through the Columbian streets as Cateleya makes her way to the American embassy with a microchip of vital information. Did I mention that she swallowed the microchip and vomited it back up? Did I mention she's doing parkour at age 9? Did I mention this takes place several years before parkour was developed? Does it matter? This is the kind of movie Colombiana is.
Cateleya sneaks away from her handlers to Chicago to stay with her gangster uncle Emilio (Cliff Curtis). She demands to be trained as a killer in order to exact revenge against Don Luis. Uncle Emilio, being a responsible parent, tells her to get an education first and emphasizes his point by shooting up the neighborhood across the street from the school she's been enrolled. Then, they walk away without consequence. This is the kind of movie Colombiana is.
An adult Cateleya (Zoe Saldana) earns a living as a contract assassin and marks her victims with a drawing of the orchid she was named after. This is a clear message to Don Luis, who is laying low in New Orleans with the help of a corrupt CIA official (Callum Blue). In her free time, Cateleya tries to have some semblance of a normal life by making booty calls to a handsome and oblivious artist named Danny (a bland Michael Vartan). She also dances around her apartment in tank tops so tight you can clearly see her nipples jutting through. This is the kind of movie Colombiana is.
Colombiana was helmed by Olivier Megaton, whose bombastic pseudonym befits his equally bombastic directing style. The action isn't spectacular though it is perfectly suitable for loud, mindless summer fare. In addition to the opening parkour set piece, two of the other major sequences in the film are the climax in which Cateleya assaults the bad guy's villa with a rocket launcher. Blunt, but effective just like this movie. There's another scene where a SWAT Team raids her apartment and Cateleya evades capture. Horndogs will especially enjoy these moments as it involves Zoe Saldana padding around barefoot and in her underwear while gripping a sniper rifle that's half her size.
Saldana is really the best thing in the movie. She might not give a well-rounded performance, but she looks good kicking ass. Much like Milla Jovovich in Besson's The Fifth Element, Saldana displays a lithe agility when she's slinking around the air vents of a police station to execute a target in lockup. There's also a Jason Bourne-style fight scene where Saldana is armed with only a towel and a toothbrush.
The script, written by Besson and Robert Mark Kamen (The Karate Kid), lacks the high stakes and immediacy that they imbued in Taken. Liam Neeson drove the plot by actively hunting down his enemies until his daughter was found. The heroine in Colombiana is too passive, content to wait for the bad guys to make their move. Also missing is a memorable villain ala Gary Oldman in The Professional.
The cast also includes Lennie James from Snatch as the obligatory, by-the-books FBI agent trying to hunt down our sexy hitwoman. In one scene, he empathically declares the killer isn't a woman. It's not possible. What a chauvinist.
So, what kind of movie is Colombiana? It's a D.A.M., a dumb action movie. One filled with explosions, stabbings, and even guys getting eaten by sharks and dogs. Sounds like a good wholesome time, right? Colombiana will satisfy your fetish for girls with guns.
Rating: ** (*****)
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