Review of Colombiana (2011) by Smirky — 16 Feb 2012

Columbiana is not much more than a collection of action movie cliches and predictable revenge movie scenes stitched together. It's been done before of course, but I was surprised at how darkly amoral everyone seems to be in this movie.

Basically zoe saldana's drug dealing parents were killed by their drug dealing boss, so as a young girl she vows to kill him right back. But she doesn't do it right away, being only eight or nine years old.

She escapes from her homeland and travels to america where she learns from her killer of a brother how to become an assasin, and spends the rest of her life killing bad guys for money in the hopes of drawing out her real target so she can kill him.

Obviously we're supposed to side with Cataleya on her riteous quest for payback, but she's just not that likeable. Her revenge motivation seems like not much more than an excuse to waste people in interesting ways, or her double standard when it comes to morality.

In one scene she weeps miserably over her lost parents, then in the next sentence, she threatens to kill the family of an FBI man one by one if he doesn't help her. Her brother and mentor isn't much better.

In another scene, he preaches to a young Cataleya the importance of education after randomly murdering some passerby in front of her school. Attempts are made to humanize Cataleya by showing she's in a relationship with Michael Vartan, a bland acessory who mostly communicates in mumbles of affection.

He seems pathetically subservient, as if he's just happy to be hittin that. Later in the movie, when he finds out the love of his life has murdered dozens of people, he sheepishly asks when he can see her again.

With a story and characters this weak its hard to enjoy the action when that starts heating up. You can point out the plot early on, and find no surprises. There's the loved ones that are going to be killed off at the end of the second act.

.there's the dedicated cop who will chase his prey through the whole movie but never quite make it..there's the smug kingpin who will get the most creative death..yeah, we've seen it all before.