I Saw A Film Today… Colombiana

I see most films alone. You may call this sad, I call it therapeutic. It’s an intimate experience. But being as this is my sites 100th post (please, hold your applause), I would like to talk about the times I don’t go alone. Going with a group of good friends is almost always an unforgettable experience. They can make good films more memorable. They can make mediocre films better. And they can make a bad film more tolerable. And with the film Colombiana, I got the pleasure of sharing it with a great friend. Here’s to a hundred more reviews, shared with friends or braved alone.

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Cataleya (Zoe Saldana) is a young Colombian girl who has just witnessed her parents being murdered. The person who carried out this act is a man named Marco (Jordi Molla), a drug lord in search for a memory card with some kind of important information that Cataleya’s father gave her. But she has no intention of giving it to this villain and in turn escapes. She takes the card to the U.S. Embassy who gives here a passport and ticket to America. I’m not sure why this action constitutes a trip stateside, but it happens anyway.

Now Cataleya is all grown up and living in Chicago. Her uncle Emilio (Cliff Curtis) has trained her to be an assassin and works for him by carrying out hits him, all while she tries to lure out her parents killer. But is this pursuit more dangerous for her and her family than she knows?

As far as the assassin-seeking-revenge genre is concerned, Colombiana is a rather mediocre submission. The writing is bland and the plot is rather predictable. And the characters are mostly stereotypes and hammy. But it knows these characters are this way and instead utilizes this to make it more fun than I expected.

But there are a lot of plot holes. For example, early in the film the uncle pulls out his revolver and randomly fires it at an innocent driver. Then he takes time to have a little chat with young Cataleya (while the police advance upon their position) and then stands up and just walks away. In a real world situation, uncle would have been slammed to the sidewalk and hauled to jail. Also, half of the film Zoe Saldana runs around in dangerous environments wearing nothing more than thin tank tops and her skivvies. The only person who can pull this off is miss Lara Croft in my opinion.

As for miss Saldana’s performance, I quite enjoyed it. I think she is a great leading action lady and look forward to seeing her in another in the future. As for the rest of the cast, the were fine but nothing memorable. The main two baddies are just clichés of other South American baddies.

There are plenty of problems with Colombiana, but it’s still a fun film to see. With the blockbuster season coming to a close, this little action film finally bring that season to a close.

Verdict: RENT IT!

*A special thank you to Aubrianna Wallace for sharing this cinematic adventure with me.

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