REVIEW - Colombiana (2011)

Colombiana

USA / France - 2011

Directed by - Olivier Megaton

Starring - Zoe Saldana, Jordi Mollà, Michael Vartan, Cliff Curtis

Color / 108 Min / Rated PG-13

I had mild hopes for Colombiana. It’s another revenger co-written by Luc Besson, whom I felt was on something of a renaissance with his quirky French action movies thanks to 2008's Taken and the surprisingly enjoyable From Paris with Love which came shortly after, but my hopes were dashed about three minutes into Colombiana when the completely absurd chase scene between a gang of hardened drug dealers and a 9-year old girl begins in earnest. The movie asks the viewer to accept that a little kid can not only outfox these hardened criminals armed with handguns and machine pistols, but that she can outrun them too, despite the fact that the crooks have vehicles. Were this film billed as a whimsical action-comedy, I’d happily buy into this fantasy, but this is essentially Nikita redux, told without so much as a hint of a tongue in cheek.

So yes, Zoe Saldana plays Cataleya Restrepo, the little girl all grown up who wants revenge on the drug lord and cronies who killed her mother and father. The resourceful girl makes her way to Chicago where her uncle Emilio (Cliff Curtis) and extended family live. Surprise, surprise -- uncle Emilio is also an underworld figure and trains Cataleya to become a top notch assassin. Yeah. Guess what? Cataleya gets her revenge.

Q: How can you fuck up a movie about a hot lady with a gun? A: Colombiana.

Let me talk about the few things that didn’t piss me off about this movie first, then we’ll get to the good stuff. At the top of the list is Cliff Curtis, the New Zealander who has portrayed pretty much every nationality but his own in the movies. He’s a tremendously underrated character actor who always seems to add a touch of class to whatever film he appears in. I also enjoy the work of Spanish actor Jordi Mollà, who plays the evil drug lord’s lieutenant here, more or less the same character you may have seen him play in the schlocky Bad Boys II. Through sheer screen presence and charisma, Mollà makes you pay attention to what is otherwise a cardboard cutout character. And finally, despite the fact that I more or less loathed the character of Cataleya (which I’ll get to in a sec), I do think Zoe Saldana has carved herself a niche as the next exotic beauty who can kick major ass in a blockbuster action movie (ala Michelle Rodriguez or Angelina Jolie) if she wants it.

Now that I’ve got that out of the way, I can spew venom on this stupid movie that takes itself way too seriously. Where to start? Let’s talk about the fact that our heroine is in fact a manipulative, selfish cunt who, in her mad pursuit for revenge, gets her entire family slaughtered and ruins the life of her tacked on love interest. That may sound like an extreme depiction on my part, but think about it: As the batshit crazy Cataleya assassinates yet another drug dealer to lure the kingpin out of hiding, uncle Emilio takes her aside and says something to the effect of “Hey! Stop it, goddammit! You’re going to get the rest of your family killed in retaliation for all this!”. He even warns her a second time, and still Cataleya continues going after the cartel. Sure enough, the criminals respond in kind by gunning down everyone Cataleya might have cared about - uncle Emilio… great aunt Jezebel… hell, even old grandpa Jimmy Jack Restrepo gets it.

The only surviving family Cataleya has after this wanton slaughter are her grandpa’s dogs. And what does she do with them? She hides them in a van which the kingpin conveniently selects as an escape vehicle at the film’s climax. Our super-smart hitwoman then implausibly yells out an attack command over a cell phone which prompts the dogs to maul Mr. Drug Dealer to death. Hee hee! Way to condemn those poor animals to death once the police find the car and have them put down, ya silly bitch.

This actually looks 100 times better than any stills I've seen of Anne Hathaway as Catwoman...

Michael Vartan is the aforementioned tacked on love interest, who has little to no chemistry with co-star Saldana. His brooding, artistic type character is arrested and interrogated by the FBI for associating with a wanted killer. Enter the hilariously miscast Lennie James as Agent Ross, the most useless, bumbling stooge of a law enforcement officer this side of Lieutenant Dangle. His initial scenes are cringe-worthy, not just because the Cockney actor can’t do an American accent to save his life, but also because Ross is utterly convinced his killer is a male when all the evidence says otherwise. He only makes a breakthrough in the case when a goddamn JANITOR passes by and comments on a clue Ross is looking at. I realize this is a failure in the script more than anything else, but if they were aiming for a token inept cop, they should have cast a stereotypical overweight, balding character actor in the role. What’s Dennis Franz doing these days?

I will concede that the action scenes are more than competently directed and the kinetics are there in all the right places, but it’s an exercise in futility when your audience doesn’t give a rat’s ass whether the heroine succeeds or fails. To put in perspective just how much I didn’t like this movie, I stopped it twice to watch other movies. Direct to video action movies. When I’d rather watch a d-list Roddy Piper flick over your big budget action movie, something is very wrong.

Also, I’m subtracting another 10,000 style points for throwing Johnny Cash’s cover of “Hurt” onto the end credits, because A.) the movie had nowhere near the kind of emotional depth to warrant such a song, and B.) didn’t we have enough movies and television shows trying to shoehorn that track into their projects circa 2003-2006? Personally, I think "Pretty Vacant" by the Sex Pistols would have been a more appropriate track to draw a curtain on this movie.

1.5 / 5