I’ve enjoyed many of the action movies written and/or directed by Luc Besson, but I hadn’t come across this one until recently. Besson co-wrote it with Robert Mark Kamen (the guy who wrote the original Karate Kid movie), and it has a pretty simple premise: in 1994, a ten-year-old girl in Bogota, Colombia, sees her parents murdered by killers working for a cartel crime boss. She grows up and becomes a professional assassin (played at that point by Zoe Saldana) who only kills targets who actually have it coming. She’s really working to get revenge on the cartel boss responsible for her parents’ murder, who by now has moved to the United States and become an asset for the CIA. The fine character Lennie James is the FBI agent who’s on Saldana’s trail.
It's a standard but workable plot, but really it’s only there as a framework
for almost non-stop action scenes. Gunfight, chase, parkour, parkour, parkour,
gunfight, chase, more parkour. The thing is, it’s all very stylishly filmed,
and even though it’s over the top (plenty of “Sure, why not?” moments), the
cast manages to sell it. Saldana is sexy and athletic, Lennie James does a good
job as the dogged investigator, and the bad guys are suitably despicable. Is
that enough for a couple of hours of entertainment? It was for me.
2 comments:
It's an odd coincidence you mention this movie. I watched it for the first time recently, on late night TV.. Columbiana is very entertaining and the plot does indeed lead to violent action scenes. It's a memorable film, with several of the trappings of an unmemorable film, but it has a certain emotive power.
I show my wife - the big action fan in the family - your review, and she watched it yesterday on Tubi. She liked it too.
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