‘Colombiana’ fails to entertain

Luc Besson burst into the film scene 22 years ago by writing and directing "La Femme Nikita," a film that is everything that "Colombiana," also written by Besson, but directed by Oliver Megaton, wants to be.

However, "Colombiana" falls short. "La Femme Nikita" manages to create a strong female action hero that garners sympathy from the audience as she struggles.

The basic storyline of "Colombiana" fails to create a good female hero, unless the only qualifiers are that she kills people and flashes her underwear. Cataleya, played by Zoe Saldana, has a father involved in a gang and she witnesses her parents being brutally murdered by a rival gang. In response, she runs away to America at the tender age of nine, outsmarting and outrunning Colombian gangs and several federal agencies.

Once there, she settles with gang-affiliated family members. At this point, Cataleya decides that she wants to be a killer and her uncle begins to train her to become an assassin.

The movie then jumps ahead 15 years where she is an assassin working for her uncle. This is where the plot should take off, but fails to do so. The movie is bland and action scenes are short and unimpressive. The audience is asked to sympathize with cold, hard killers who are introduced with three lines and killed off.

It was not possible to build an emotional connection with anyone in the film.

For example, the only characters who the viewer have any real reason to feel sorry for is Cateleya's mother and aunt since they do nothing inherently wrong in the movie.

The main issue with this is that neither of them says much of anything. Also, the camera work throughout the fight scenes is choppy and fails to capture all of the action. I really wanted to like this movie, as it's from the mind of Luc Besson and features Zoe Saldana.

However, Luc Besson's touch is lost in the movie, and Zoe Saldana seems to have been typecast. Where "La Femme Nikita" managed to be a rather empowering movie for females, "Colombiana" seems to simply parade Zoe Saldana around as a scantily clad sex object with guns.

The nail in the coffin is the ending of the movie. Johnny Cash's "Hurt" plays as the movie fades to the credits. This is ironic because in a four minute song, Johnny Cash manages to evoke more emotion than the entire film.

I would recommend watching the fantastic Luc Besson film, "La Femme Nikita" -- however, I really can not recommend "Colombiana" to anyone unless you are a fan of watching paint dry.