Even the talent of Saldana can’t turn dog food into a delicacy. With the exception of one scene, the action is completely unengaging.
Before the eyes of Cataleya, a nine-year-old Colombian girl, her parents are murdered. She flees to the United States to her uncle Emilio (Curtis). Fifteen years pass, and Cataleya (Saldana) works for her uncle as a hitwoman, secretly plotting revenge against the gangsters who killed her parents.
Luc Besson, whose great talent gave us Nikita and Léon, has been spreading himself thin since he started writing for others. After directing “The Fifth Element” (1997), his typewriter has churned out, with varying degrees of success, the plots and/or screenplays for five “Taxi” movies (2007), three “Transporter” movies (2008), “Bandidas” (2006), “Kiss of the Dragon” (2001), “District 13 – Ultimatum” (2009), “Danny the Dog,” and the megahit “Taken” (2008). In his latest screenplay for sale, the opening salvos – the murder of the young heroine’s parents and the stunning scene in which the adult Cataleya (Zoe Saldana) kills a drug dealer in his cell – clearly show the goals that Besson and his frequent collaborator Robert Mark Kamen set for themselves in “Colombiana.” This is a modern version of the girl-assassin story, a 21st-century “Nikita”/“Léon.” Saldana, the star of the biggest box-office hit in film history (“Avatar” (2009)), plays a sexy hitwoman with obvious mental issues, a character that combines equal parts Batman (murdered parents) and Catwoman (feline agility). The shot misses the mark, and it takes a lot of effort to miss so spectacularly.
The Downfall of “Colombiana”
The problem isn’t Saldana: the main role is a perfect fit for the actress once known as Zoë Yadira Saldaña Nazario, almost as much as a role in a biopic about Whitney Houston, which she’s sure to get. The snag is in Besson and Kamen’s screenplay, which doesn’t just suffer from a complete lack of logic (for example, if Cataleya’s life was ruined by heartless killers, why did she grow up to be exactly the same, why does she not care about the consequences and innocent victims?). The film is so overloaded with coincidences, convoluted plans, and convenient accidents that you can almost hear the screenwriter typing away in the theater. The second and this time irreparable flaw: “Transporter 3” director Olivier Megaton attacks the material with a subtlety that perfectly matches his last name. As a result, it feels like in every scene (with one disappointing exception), it’s not people falling to the floor with a thud, but chunks of meat – sometimes overcooked, sometimes undercooked, but always rotten.
Final Verdict
Add to the far-fetched plot twists the absurdity of the characters, and the result is a film that resembles a low-grade mix of a famous scene from JJ Abrams’ “Alias” (the presence of Michael Vartan further reinforces this impression) and some action movie from the 80s, in which Rae Dawn Chong or Maria Conchita Alonso played the main roles instead of Stallone and Schwarzenegger. In reality, it’s even worse – it’s some kind of “Transporter,” but without Jason Statham.