Movie Review: ‘Colombiana’ – Zoe Saldana’s Cataleya Is a Familiar Character In Luc Besson’s Library
Written on August 27, 2011 by Koby Jeffery
In preparing for the climax of Colombiana, Zoe Saldana loads as many oversized automatic weapons as she can find into an armored truck, I was taken back to the classic Schwarzenegger out-to-get-em films like Commando or even Raw Deal. No, AC/DC or Rolling Stones wasn’t blaring, and the bad guys are more savvy these days. But I still got that lovely sensation when the hair raised on my neck and the adrenaline ran to the tips of my front teeth because I knew that the bad guys were going to meet their maker.
Luc Besson who directed Léon: The Professional and wrote and produced Taken, knows a thing or two about igniting a blaze under the girls and gun fetish. He redefined it 1990 with La Femme Nikita. Let’s face it though, Saldana looks good holding a phone book, so the hard part came from her training so that it looked real. Like the star, Bessons scripts are extraordinarily lean on fat and uncessary dialogue; they are fluid, and are like a high speed bullet train on a one-way trip to a very dark, yet satisfying finish. Director Olivier Megaton knows what to do with Besson’s work. The result is a vivid, fast-moving story, thats saturated with color and composed in each scene.
Saldana plays Cataleya Restrepo, who is named after a type of orchid. We are often-reminded of that fact throughout the film. (Besson is apparently not a believer of short-term memory.) Her tale of revenge goes back to Colombia in 1992 when her parents, Fabio (Jesse Borrego) and Alicia (Cynthia Addai-Robinson) are gunned down in front of her.
The young Cataleya (Amandla Stenberg) escapes in a thrilling–now trite–parkour chase through the tiered neighborhoods of Bogota. She ends up in Chicago where she locates her uncle Emilio (Cliff Curtis) an assassin who she asks to train her to kill people. He agrees to train her body but only after she learns how to use her mind in school.
15 years later the girl we were introduced to has grown into Saldana’s Cataleya–a perfectly honed contract killer. Her uncle Emilio finds jobs for her to get rid of the waste that fills the country. Everyone from small-time crooks to ponzi scheme masterminds, Cataleya uses a bouquet of skills in stealth, disguise, and deception. She has ninja-like skills and cat-like reflexes. When she finishes a job, she showers, she visits her artist boyfriend Danny (Michael Vartan) masquerades a roamce and escapes in the morning before he can even attempt to make her breakfast and then she waits.
What Emilio doesn’t know is that Cataleya leaves a calling card at the scene of every job she does intentionally in hopes that her work will be seen as a serial killer. She hopes that her work will be seen as the work of a serial killer but her message is meant to smoke out the people who slaughtered her family.
Besides Saldana, Lennie James (The Walking Dead) pleases the crowd again, this time playing the sympathetic sap, Special Agent Ross, who is just doing his job assigned to a case of the cataleya tag murders. Hes always just a step behind. Also of note is Jordi Mollá just breathes slimeball every time he steps in front of a camera ever since he broke onto the Hollywood scene with Blow. Here as Marco he’s once again the right hand man carrying out the dirty work of Don Luis (Beto Benites).
Once you meet the boyfriend and the extended family in Chicago, you know it’s only a matter of time before it’s going to end badly. There’s no fairy tale ending; like Taken, this is revenge served on an icy platter. And satisfying that revenge is an important motivating factor, because wanting to see it through allows viewers to suspend disbelief that the willowy and gaunt Saldana could carry out these acts of violence, especially when dragging around a sniper rifle that’s almost as large and heavy as she is.
Saldana was already a star long before Colombiana, having starred in Star Trek, Avatar and The Losers, but here she proves she can carry a film with her screen presence. It’s evident by her physical performance slinking her way in and out of body suits and air vents that she might have been a more appropriate choice for Catwoman in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises than Anne Hathaway. Her face is undeniably radiant but dangerous too.
As a fan of the revenge/assassin genre, the methodical, minimalist, secluded exploits of an assassin are welcomed in all of its forms whether it’s George Clooney in The American, Forrest Whitaker in Ghost Dog, Maggie Q in Nikita, or Zoe Saldana in Colombiana. Unfortunately there’s not a lot new added to the genre; if youve seen a handful of these films, then youll recognize several elements such as the dozens of faceless thugs, the elaborate caper hit, and the enabling handler. I also wish they would have spoken half the film in Spanish with subtitles instead of the broken Spanglish.
The romance between Danny and Cataleya is especially tragic, a one-way street where Danny is not afraid to throw around “love” even though he knows nothing about his girlfriend while she cant stand to say more than a few words to him on the phone. Yeeesh. The only love Cataleya has is for her fallen family and thats all she has going for her. She can only succeed in her dead end mission, otherwise what else is there for someone born into a life of killing? Even for Besson and co-writer Robert Mark Kamen, Colombiana is not new ground, but it still finds a way to be an entertaining, fun ride as long as your main goal is to see Saldana look good while playing the grim reaper. Though far-fetched, Colombiana is still worth a one-time viewing.
Starring: Zoe Saldana, Lennie James, Michael Vartan, Jordi Mollá Directed by: Olivier Megaton Screenplay by: Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen Studio: Europa Corp. Release Date: August 26, 2011
Rating:
6.5 / 10
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