Colombiana Movie Review

by Rick Grant
Action director Luc Besson is behind this French / German film that features a La Femme Nikita-like assassin for hire, Saldana Cataleya (Zoe Saldana). As a child, in Bogota, Colombia, she witnessed a Cartel leader, Don Luis and his gang brutally slaughter her parents in front of her. This traumatic event instilled a deep seeded vengeance motivation in her consciousness.
Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen’s screenplay skips over Cataleya’s childhood, where she got advanced physical and weapons training The movie cuts from 1992 to present day, where we see Cataleya in disguise to get into the jail to murder one of Luis’ gang.
Interestingly, she may have started out killing only those thugs who killed her parents. But now, she’s an assassin for hire working through her uncle Emilio Restrepo (Cliff Curtis).
Cataleya is so good at her job, she’s a ghost. She makes the hit and disappears like a magician by crawling through ducks, slinking through alleys, and moving rapidly over rooftops.
Ah yes, she has a boyfriend, an artist named Danny (Michael Vartan). He knows nothing about her secret life, but that she pops in without notice and uses him for her sexual satisfaction. But Danny wants to get to know her, which she has no intention of revealing.
Where ever this chick got her weapons training, she knows her guns. She maintains an arsenal of the latest and deadliest assault weapons, Uzis, RPGs, and other deadly weapons.
In one sequence, she’s wearing only skimpy underwear, a fancy clip belt, she’s carrying a semi-automatic Barrett M107 .50 caliber sniper rifle, and a hand gun. Yes, this display of deadly weaponry strapped on this thin sexy woman redefines the rapid increase of testosterone in male viewers. Oh baby! When Cataleya goes on a mission she straps on her whoop-ass ordnance to cause extreme mayhem.
Alas, leaving out all of Cataleya’s training up to present day was a mistake. Seeing her transition from a young girl, full of rage, into a skilled operative would have enhanced her character.
Still, she floats through the deadly underworld of drug kingpins and despicable scumbags like a ghost rider of the Apocalypse. The poor slobs never knew what hit them. She’s always way ahead of the plodding FBI agent, who is determined to nail her.