Luc Besson has a spotted past with action films. He's made some classics (The Professional, La Femme Nikita) and some real stinkers (From Paris With Love). His new film, written and produced by Besson, directed by the awesomely named Oliver Megaton, opened this weekend. So how does Colombiana compare to his other films? Find out after the jump.
Colombiana follows the adventures of a young girl, Cataleya, who witnesses her parents murder at the hand of an evil cartel. She moves to Chicago, where her uncle teaches her to be an assassin. In one of the most unintentionally funny motivational speeches I've ever seen, he convinces her to also stay in school.
Then a subtitle reads "15 years later" and the movie really begins. Cataleya (Zoe Saldana) is now a successful assassin with at least 22 hits to her name. After each hit, she paints the Cataleya orchid on her victim's bodies, which is important because they only grow in the region of Colombia she was originally from.
For a silly action film, this movie is quite talky. There's also the inclusion of a love interest for Saldana, something so shoehorned in and unnecessary that I still don't understand why the filmmakers included it.
This film is incredibly conventional and unremarkable. I doubt that anyone will remember this movie by this time next year. That said, it is kind of mindless fun. There was never a point in the film, where I thought to myself "this movie sucks". It was more of an "eh" throughout the entire film. The exceptions are the hit scenes, which are very exciting and well done. Overall though, nothing is done in this film that hasn't been done before. I'd only recommend it to hardcore action fans.
3 out of 5 stars
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