Colombiana
2011 Directed by Olivier Megaton
Synopsis
Revenge is beautiful.
Zoe Saldana plays a young woman who, after witnessing her parents’ murder as a child in Bogota, grows up to be a stone-cold assassin. She works for her uncle as a hitman by day, but her personal time is spent engaging in vigilante murders that she hopes will lead her to her ultimate target: the mobster responsible for her parents' death.
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It starts off okay but by the end of the final fight, I hated this movie.
Once again - the BOURNE SUPREMACY "style" is present here: action scenes where you can't tell what is going on due to the tight close-ups and quick cutting.
The worst scene was the final fight. The whole film builds to this moment - and then we are treated to shots that don't last more than half a second. The camera crosses the line from one cut to the next. No tension. Nothing to keep you on the edge of your seat - because you're trying to train your eyes and brain to comprehend what you are seeing.
The story was convoluted and had far too many coincidences. I'm going to make a point to stay away from any action movie from this director from now on. -
Luc Besson has a thing for skinny, dark haired female assassins. Who knew.
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This review reportedly contains spoilers. I can handle the truth.
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Int. Day – HOLLYWOOD EXECUTIVE’S OFFICE
HOLLYWOOD EXECUTIVE
So what’s this idea you’ve been dying to tell me?
HOLLYWOOD SCREENWRITER
It’s a revenge picture! With a sexy dame!
HOLLYWOOD EXECUTIVE
Oh. You mean like La Femme Nikita? Or Haywire? Or Kill Bill? Or Coffy? Or Underworld?
HOLLYWOOD SCREENWRITER
Right. But this one’s Latina!
HOLLYWOOD EXECUTIVE
Interesting. Does she dance sexy?
HOLLYWOOD SCREENWRITER
Yeah. In her UNDERWEAR!
HOLLYWOOD EXECUTIVE
OK. I’m listening. So what happens? Somebody kills her family?
HOLLYWOOD SCREENWRITER
Yeah. They kill her family. TWICE!
HOLLYWOOD EXECUTIVE
Go on.
HOLLYWOOD SCREENWRITER
So her family’s double dead. And she’s Latina. She’s COLOMBIAN! It’s called…COLOMBIANA!
HOLLYWOOD EXECUTIVE
Is that her name too?
HOLLYWOOD SCREENWRITER
No.
HOLLYWOOD EXECUTIVE
Then why is the movie called that?
HOLLYWOOD SCREENWRITER
(sighs) Because COLOMBIA!
HOLLYWOOD EXECUTIVE
Oh. Ok. Sounds good. Do you have a script?
HOLLYWOOD SCREENWRITER
Do you need one?
END SCENE
And that’s how COLOMBIANA got made.
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Luc Besson has descended into drivel.
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In 1994, Luc Besson wrote and directed a film about a girl, whose whole family gets killed and who wants to become a killer to get her revenge. It was a masterpiece.
17 years later, Luc Besson wrote another film about a girl, whose whole family gets killed and who wants to become a killer to get her revenge. It was mediocre. At best.
While these two films share a similar starting position, the directions they choose couldn't be more different.
Léon is a haunting and beautiful portrayal of a lost childhood and an unlikely friendship, contrasted with a great performance from Gary Oldman as a villain that actually deserves that title. Colombiana is an action film that doesn't even…
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Of course, Haywire did the female assassin story better. Look who directed it. Colombiana is directed by Olivier Megaton. He's one of the directors in Luc Besson's stable and churns out stuff like this and Trasnporter 3 and Taken 2. Meaning, the story will be dumb, but the action will be decent.
Colombiana is about a young girl whose mother and cartel enforcer father are murder in Columbia. She escapes and the police and makes her way to Chicago where she shows up at her tio's house. She tells him she wants to be a killer. Then he shoots a gun in public because she doesn't want to go to school. Cut to 15 years later and she's a badass…
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Young Cataleya (later on in life portrayed by Zoe Saldana) witnesses the death of her parents as a young child in Bogota, and conveniently as always, she also meets their killer in person. She escapes and travels to America to live with her uncle, who trains her to become a professional assassin for 15 years. After that, it's all kicking ass and not taking any names.
This is a typical Luc Besson movie, not interested in logic as much as action. Don't expect things to make sense, but for what it's worth, this is solid entertainment with Saldana looking good while she dispatches people. There are dashes of thriller in here (the action doesn't truly ramp up until the ending),…
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This film is a pretty formulaic approach. It's pretty obvious that they just wanted to tick off the boxes - guns, violence, explosions, action, sex appeal etc. - but with all that said, I still enjoyed it. My biggest complaint is that in a film like this, you should acknowledge that plot isn't the big draw here, and just get it over with. But they spend the first 30 minutes setting up a back-story for Saldana's character, which means the star actress isn't even in the first ~30% of the film!
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Femme Fatale -meininkejä yksinkertaisella mutta ihan toimivalla jännistysmomentilla. Zoe Saldanalla on pitkät päällä.
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This movie was a disappointment.. I felt the pacing was bad and in turn hurt the story. I thought the story concept was good.. but not very original.
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Luc Besson does yet another riff on his La Femme Nikita & Mathilda from Leon character by basically blending them together and casting Zoe Saldana in the role. If you like Besson endless churning out of half decent action flicks then you'll enjoy this. It doesn't have the class, action, character or passion behind it that Nikita, Leon or Taken has and he should stop using the ludicrously named Olivier Megaton as director but it's still good to kill a couple of hours with.
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A wise person once said you can't judge a book by its cover. After being burnt by absolute garbage like Blitz and Colombiana I think I'll stick to judging movies by their incredibly bad covers
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A decent film that was far less annoying than it's trailer...
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I-70 Drive In (Kansas City, KS)
Second part of a double feature. Trashy good fun. But still trash.