Revenge, revenge, and more revenge. This movie serves it up in heaps and piles. And as the bullets fly and the body count rises, a new action hero emerges.
Columbiana opens with nine-year-old Cataleya witnessing her parents’ murder in Bogota, then escaping their killers in a delightfully fast-paced chase scene that rivals any from in the Bourne movies — and that awesome one in the beginning of Casino Royale. Little orphan Cataleya then makes her way to her Uncle Emilio (Cliff Curtis: 10,000 B.C., Live Free or Die Hard) in Chicago and informs him, “I want to be a killer.”
Fast forward to fifteen years and a whole lot of dead bodies later; all-grown-up Cataleya (Zoe Saldana: Avatar, Star Trek) is an ass-kicking, gun-toting assassin who, in addition to taking her uncle’s assignments, has a pet project: killing everyone involved with murdering her parents. Also in the mix are an artist boyfriend (Michael Vartan: Alias, Hawthorne), who doesn’t even know that he doesn’t even know her real name, and an FBI agent (Lennie James: Snatch, The Walking Dead) hot on her trail.
I suppose all the comparisons to 1994’s The Professional — also directed by Luc Besson, also about a female seeking revenge after her family is killed — are inevitable, but honestly, the movies aren’t at all similar. The Professional is about a 12-year-old girl. Cataleya is a grown woman, hear her roar, and
her cold-blooded settling of scores is better compared to the bad-assery of Uma Thurman's and Linda Hamilton's characters in Kill Bill and Terminator 2. Oh, and lest we get bored with simple shootings, we’re treated to a goodly array of murder methods: one bad guy is killed by his pet sharks; another is electrocuted in the bathtub; etc.
Good acting is often sorely lacking in action movies; not so here. Curtis, Vartan, and James all play their parts well. Heck, even the young actress who plays nine-year-old Cataleya (Amandla Stenberg: The Hunger Games) does a good job. And Saldana (who, I maintain, should have at least gotten an Oscar nod for playing Neytiri in Avatar, dammit) shines as the tough-yet-tormented main character. Cataleya kills — often — but she also cuddles with grandma, critiques art, and cries over departed loved ones. Is Saldana convincing as an action hero? At the end of a particularly pivotal fight scene, everyone in the movie theater cheered and applauded. So, yes.
There are a few departures from reality — Will a vomited-up computer chip really still work perfectly? Are all ventilation shafts that large, shiny, and clean? Can one shoot up a whole neighborhood in broad daylight in front of witnesses galore then simply walk away? Is every DMV in America staffed only by fat, sassy black women? — but overall, Columbiana is an exciting, explosion-filled romp of a good time. I hope that it, Angelina Jolie’s Salt, and the forthcoming Haywire are the start of many more tough chicks in action flicks!
Thanks for paving the way, Sigourney Weaver.
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