Reviewed by

Christopher Armstead

In this movie ‘Colombiana’, a film almost completely eviscerated by its PG-13 rating, we meet little Cataleya (Amandla Sternberg), probably the most hardcore nine year old schoolgirl you will ever run into. Girlfriend’s parents just got slaughtered by the evil Don Luis (Beto Benites) right in front of her, kind of, I mean it was implied they got slaughtered, but considering that Cat’s dad was Don Luis right hand man, he couldn’t have been all that great a guy either. Anyway, Don’s right hand man Marco (Jordi Molla) wants something that he knows the freshly dead father gave to the girl. She doesn’t give it up, causes Marco some damage, and proceeds to parkour her way through the streets of whatever town this is like a pro. She makes her escape, ends up in Chicago under the care of her murderous, but sweet uncle Emilio (Cliff Curtis) and twenty years later she will grow up looking a lot like Zoe Saldana and hungering for revenge.

Adult Cataleya is now a professional assassin, and we observe her particular skills as she breaks into a prison and offs some bad dude whose background we know nothing about. Of course that dead dudes history isn’t important, just how awesome Cataleya is adept at slithering through amazingly clean and dust free air conditioning ducts in a cat suit.

This is just another in a very long line of murders of bad people, being investigated by haggard FBI agent John Ross (Lennie James), and they know that these killings are done by the same person because of the rudimentary drawing Cataleya leaves on the bodies. It’s an orchid. Called the Cataleya. Found largely in Columbia. Where Cataleya is from. Cataleya used to be in FBI custody. I’m thinking one of those fancy computers they showed Agent Ross using should’ve put all of that together. Regardless, Agent Ross has decided that it’s time to show the public the rudimentary drawing on the body so that whoever this message is for can get the message. At long last.

Meanwhile, Cataleya has a boyfriend. Kind of. In a way. Danny (Michael Vartan) is a painter and every couple of weeks when he comes home Cataleya is there. She doesn’t

say much, he doesn’t know her real name, she just jumps on him, rides him for a couple hours and then leaves in the middle of the night. Danny is in love. But Danny is sad that she doesn’t engage him in conversation. While Danny doesn’t look stupid, a woman who breaks into your apartment, gives you fake names, won’t talk to you and leaves in the middle night is either married to a mobster, on the run, or an international assassin. One or the other. You also probably shouldn’t snap a picture of her while she’s sleeping.

Eventually Don Luis, who is staying in Miami under CIA protection, gets the message she’s been leaving for him. He sends a message back. Cataleya seems absolutely SHOCKED to receive the Don’s message. She had no idea that the Don would do this thing he did. Strange, Cataleya didn’t seem stupid… Now Cat has to make the Don and his legion of lousy hitmen protectors pay. For real this time.

You know we love us some Zoe Saldana here at the FCU. Sure, the woman looks like she could use a double sausage biscuit with egg and cheese, smothered in gravy, maybe with a side of pork chops, but she sure is purdy. We weren’t too crazy about her movie ‘Colombiana’ however. There are a few reasons for this, for starters, we didn’t like Cataleya all that much. That’s a bit of an issue in a movie such as this because it was difficult, if not damned impossible, to separate the character of Cataleya from the people she was killing. For a revenge themed movie to succeed, you really want to see your hero completely end the lives of the evil people who did our hero wrong, but not nearly enough time was spent making Don Luis evil, and in fact his right hand man Marco was more charming that Cataleya. It’s not like we were rooting for Marco or Don Luis, but we weren’t actively rooting for Cataleya either.

Another issue we had is that this is a brutally violent exploitation movie with a PG-13 rating. That doesn’t go together. If you’re going to make a movie like this, then make the movie the way it needs to be done. Take ‘The Punisher: Warzone’ for example. One can debate whether or not it’s a good movie… it’s in my personal collection so you know where I stand… but that’s the way that kind of movie is supposed to be made. Since I didn’t care all that much for our main character, at least allow me to care for the brutal action that this revenge murder movie should be providing. Instead I got cutaways, implied violence, and mindless explosions. And while we have absolutely no desire to see Zoe Saldana naked, either show nude scenes or just stop the high effort peek-a-boo cover-up sequences that we were forced to sit through. That’s time that could’ve been spent blowing peoples heads off.

The one decent fight scene in the film was filmed in such a way, by director Oliver Megaton, that it was all cuts, zooms, pans and dashes so you couldn’t really see what was going on or who was punching who. I saw Ms. Saldana’s little featurette about this movie, and I know the girl trained hard to sell us on the fact that she was 72 pound bag of pure badass, so let us see the fight without all the fancy camera tricks. Come on now Mr. Megaton.

Nothing but love for Oliver Megaton, but if they had let someone like Lexi Alexander direct this movie… I’m just saying is all. Ms. Alexander knows what to do with this kind of subject matter. Regardless, while ‘Colombiana’ wasn’t a complete waste of time, it did fail to fulfill my violent, bloodlust revenge desires.